As I mentioned last week, when I was recounting the perils of polymer clay, I originally started looking at polymer clay specifically for working with alcohol inks. I was first astounded by the lovely Veronika Sturdy over on Flickr with her work. It’s detailed and colorful and leaves me wanting to make LOTS of stuff!
And so I went hunting, to see if I could find out a) How to make my own alcohol ink and b) how to make something so vibrant and beautiful.
The first part was easy enough to find, over at Crafting a Green World, I read the tut, and quickly ran around my home looking for a bag of markers I’d stashed. Et voila! 30 mins later, I had a bunch of alcohol inks. But…. How do you use them?
Well, I found two lovely tutorials.
The first lets you make something like this
Except… you have to have liquid polymer clay. Which I don’t have access to for the time being… Hrm. Back to the internet. Which led to the second one.
A very lovely tut, easy simple to follow, and best of all, only two things were required, and I had both! Polymer clay and alcohol ink. 
But… It’s not quite as vibrant as the lovely ones that Veronika Sturdy attains…
So I decided to do tests first. I had to make sure that it would work. And that is what this post comes from. My tests of alcohol ink vs polymer clay.
First up, we have Alcohol Ink, painted directly to UNCURED clay.
I used the same technique for both the white and the black pieces. Just a simple stripe of the different colors, going around the piece. I tried to make sure they didn’t bleed, but wasn’t 100% successful.
I
The row below is the pieces after they were baked. The colors of the inks became a little bit lighter, but not by much. The black has an iridescent look to it, which is hard to see unless you get the angle just right, and even harder to capture on camera.
These next three photos are tests of CURED clay that was then painted. (The black ink didn’t change a bit, and I decided not to waste your time trying to see what wasn’t there. =sighs= I was so hoping for a beautiful black shimmer bangle…)
The first two are the same side, just with a wait time in between them. You can see how much more vibrant the colors are when done this way, but also how much more they bleed into one another through the groves O.O The back is just a fun piece I did, testing out the splatter technique I see everyone doing on glass. Surprisingly it does work, but the colors are rather muddy.
These last two photos are, believe it or not, taken just two hours after the first three. What happened? I was rubbing the pieces back and forth in my hands. Apparently without some sort of sealant the colors will rub away except in the deepest spots. Such as the groves of the piece on the left. However, I do like how the edges (?) are shown with the wearing away on the right.
So, that is my tests on alcohol inks, and how they work when applied to polymer clay. I’ll be back with more soon enough. ^^
Ideas? Comments? Questions? Comment below
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