Do you like making art?
How about with alcohol?
Not the kind you drink though, sorry. Today, I would like to show you, mostly tell you, my process of making your own alcohol inks and some fun things you can do with them.
First, hit that dollar store! I am cheap and poor with that million dollar attitude (could spend it if I had it), so you can find everything you need at Dollar Tree.
Supplies:
· At least eight bottles (I used the empty travel shampoo bottles)
· Two packages of permanent markers, eight count (make sure it is permanent)
· Rubbing alcohol 91% proof (there are different grades out there)
· Pliers
· Rubber (latex/nitrile) gloves
· X-Acto knife
· A frame with real glass or any type of paper
· Hair dryer or heat tool
Instructions for DIY alcohol ink:
1. With a small struggle and with gloves on, rip the marker in half and take out the color stick (don’t know what else to call it). Put this in a bottle and make a small incision of it in the middle to let the ink bleed out, each color will have two each.
2. Pour alcohol like it’s raining into the bottle until a half an inch from the top.
3. Next screw the cap on and shake.
4. Do steps 1-3 for all bottles.
5. Next, let them sit on a shelf and be forgotten about for at least 24 hours, though the longer, the better.
6. Also in a separate spray bottle, put rubbing alcohol in it and fill it to the stop.
7. Optional step: you can take the color stick out and squeeze the remaining juice (ink) into the bottle, or like lazy me and keep it in the bottle.
8. Another optional step: can also label your bottles with colors, I don’t.
Instructions to create some not so terrible art:
1. Disassemble your frame so only the glass remains. Put the rest of the frame aside. On a piece of cardboard, place the glass, select the colors you would like to use and combine, and the alcohol spray bottle.
2. Spray the glass with the alcohol, dibble, dabble the colors in random dots, lines, swirls on the glass. Then spray again with the alcohol.
3. I used a hair dryer as opposed a heating tool, a heating tool gets too hot and you cannot work the ink as much—in my opinion. But anyways, it may take a few times, but you can make waves, mix the colors together, and make it dry faster. I noticed the ink likes to go the edges, so blow inward when that happens and you will not get a line.
4. Put the frame back together and there you go! A masterpiece!
5. Also once it is try, you can spray again, only once or twice and it will create dots instead of a blurred line.
6. You can either frame it by itself, or print something off from the print and put behind the class I have both shown below of what I did.
Let me know if you have tried alcohol inks, what you have done with them, or tried my version!
