I love me some alcohol inks! You really can’t mess them up because no matter what colours you pick to blend together, they all work – no muddiness or anything, they just play nice together! And if you don’t like what you get then add more or, on certain surfaces, wipe it all off and start over! I mean really, what’s not to like about that?

There are a bunch of techniques I love – using them on canvas, making plaid, removing parts with Archival Ink – but one of my favourite looks is marbled. This looks the coolest on fragments (you can also get charms), but works equally well on any transparent surface, like acetate or page protectors. For me, it’s just an embellishment as is, I don’t do anything more than make them and adhere them to my project, but you could also stamp sentiments and images over them to use as focal points.

Here’s what you need:

Alcohol Ink, Fragments, Ink blending tool with felt, heat tool (optional).

First, just add a few colours to your felt. Simply put the tip of the ink applicator in the felt and give it a 2-3 second squeeze. If you don’t put the tip in the felt, well, let’s just say you could have alcohol ink permanently stuck all over the place. Of course, I don’t know this by experience, oh no, not me, I would never do something like that. I’ve just heard it could happen. *ahem*

Now, pounce your felt all over your fragment, twisting the ink blending tool as you go to mix and blend the colours. Don’t worry about what this layer looks like, we’ll be adding lots to it yet!

Because I’m impatient, I use a heat tool to speed up the drying process though it really isn’t necessary as they dry pretty quickly.

Next, add a little more intense colour to the felt, if you wish. I thought the first layer was pretty light and needed some depth so I added a darker colour. Then you pounce and dry again. I don’t add any more ink after this step since you want the felt to dry a little – as it dries and you add more layers, it gets “stickier” and builds the effect we’re going for.

Just keep pouncing and drying, pouncing and drying, until you get dark lines running through the colours on the fragment.

See? Marbled alcohol inks!

I like the fragments because of the thickness and translucency of the finished piece, but it does look cool on a page protector too, especially if you want to use said protector as a memorabilia pocket in an album.

Now, just add the fragment to your project and consider it done! Personally, I think they’re interesting and pretty enough to stand on their own, so I leave them alone.

This would be great hanging on a thank you gift, or birthday present…

You can see that I ended up using different colours for my finished tag – now I just have to find a spot to put the teal one I made!

As always, leave me a comment with a link to any projects you try using this technique – I’d love to see what you come up with!

S.