Dropping Ink Demo + Cool Divided Page Protectors

A few months back Tim Holtz emailed and asked me if I would be interested in doing some demos in the Ranger booth at CHA Summer. My first thought was, "what in the heck would I do?" I've never really done a demo at a big show before and I don't really think of myself as a technique person.

I emailed him and asked if he had some vision or idea of what he wanted to see me doing at the demo table. He emailed back and told me he wanted me to "just do what I do."

Um, yea. What do I do? I tell stories. I take pictures. I like mini books. I like acrylic. I like basic geometric shapes. I like geometric patterns. I like color.

So I grabbed my current basket of minibooks and looked through them to see if I could pull something out that would be acceptable and the least bit interesting to the people at the show. I came across this project I did in Tena Springer's class at Inspired last April:

"That could work," I told myself. I could do alcohol ink drops. I love ink drops. They are simple + easy and they are different from the blending that Tim usually showcases when demoing the alcohol inks. I am all about keeping it simple so why not do a simple demo. Basically I decided to do an anti-blending alcohol ink demo on acrylic.

I acquired some sheets of Hambly 12x12 clear overlays that were cut to both 6x6 and 2x3 and spent my time in the booth dropping ink to create patterns on acrylic. There is really no technique here besides knowing that blending isn't the only option in working with the inks. To create the look above and below, simply tilt the bottle and let a drop come out (you barely have to squeeze the bottle at all).You know you are on the "right" side if the ink drop expands and grows (if it stays in one little lump then you are on the "wrong" side and can wipe off the drop with a baby wipe).

A couple of my favorite colors of alcohol ink include lettuce, rust, and caramel.

In addition to the single dots I also did some layering of dots - dropping a second color on top of the first to create the cool concentric circles. Really, I was just having fun messing around.

One of the things I also got to play with while I was demoing were the alcohol ink mixatives (these were totally new to me and the silverwas definitely my favorite along with the gold). I loved how concentrated they could be in one drop out of the bottle (you do need to squeeze a bit harder on these because of their thicker consistency and they take longer to dry). You can also use these mixatives a la Tim and blend them all together with the other alcohol inks for that cool marbled look. For me though, it was all about the dots and concentrated color.

Another thing I had fun experimenting with was creating patterns on the ink blending foam and stamping them on to the acrylic using the ink blending tool
(the wood handled tool shown above and in the first photo of this post). I added ink directly to the foam in small dots on one piece and then a larger outlined circle on the other. This acts just like a stamp. So many possibilities for cool geometric shapes.

I also took along a couple albums with me from Clear Scraps. They have a new system out called "Clearly" My Album and it includes all the letters of the alphabet in a bunch of different sizes to make your own word albums. This one here says "Simon" and I dropped alcohol ink patterns on each page.

I really had fun playing around at the demo table after I got over being super nervous on the first day. It was nice to be there just to play and experiment and to communicate that to the people who stopped by to watch and chat and ask what in the heck I was doing there.

Thanks for asking Tim :).

And
one more thing I am super excited about from the show is this new line
of divided page protectors from Karen Russell's Narratives line from Creative Imaginations. I am a big fan of incorporating divided page protectors into my albums already - these will be great additions. These will be available later this year.