Stencils With Alcohol Ink

Welcome to Monday – another week for more creations! On Saturday, I posted a couple of cards using 2 different mediums with stencils. If you missed it, you can see that post HERE. Today, I have another medium to share – stencils with alcohol ink! I’ll share with you how you can create 2 cards with one inking of a stencil, with different looks.

NEGATIVE STENCILING

When using a stencil, we fill in the ‘negative’ or open spaces, to leave the images behind in the colour of the base. This is what we’re doing with this first card.

STENCILING DETAILS

First, spritz the back of the Lavinia Stamp Pods stencil with isopropyl alcohol, then lay it down onto a piece of Yupo. Yupo is a non porous, synthetic substrate (though we just refer to it as ‘paper’). Press down on the stencil, to achieve as much contact as you can. The ink does bleed a bit  under the stencil, but that’s part of the beauty of it! Now, drop your ink colours directly from the bottles, trying to keep most of the ink in the negative (open) spaces.  Now, you can leave it as is, or do what I did, which is press down with my gloved hand to ‘smoosh’ the ink & fill in any gaps.

Set this aside to thoroughly dry – you want to be able to hear the tackiness of the ink when you’re lifting off the stencil. Leave it for a least an hour; I set mine aside overnight, while I worked on something else.

Once the ink is dry, lift off the stencil, and admire the gorgeous pattern! Trim and embellish the panel how you like. I used the MFT Sweet Hello stamp set and coordinating die for the sentiment and die cut. Then I layered everything together on coordinating cardstock.

POSITIVE STENCILING

Before you clean off your stencil, you can now create a second card! Have your 2nd piece of Yupo ready. Spritz the front of the stencil with isopropyl alcohol, and then turn it over and place face down onto the Yupo. The alcohol reactivates the ink, to transfer it to the Yupo.  With your gloved hand, press down on the stencil, to maximize contact. You can also spray more iso alcohol on top of the stencil, if you want more ink to spread.

Again, allow the ink to dry – this will take less time, as there’s less ink.  Remove the stencil, and there you have another card panel!

As you can see, the ink is much lighter, and now you have the positive image of the Pods stencil.  Again, use your panel as you wish. I cut mine into thirds, attached the strips onto black cardstock to help make the colour ‘pop’, and then added a dark turquoise card base. The sentiment is from the Studio Katia Peony Trimmings stamp set, and die cut with the coordinating dies.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

This is one of those times when even the negative is a good thing! Here’s a look at the two, side by side.

Do you have a preference? The saturated colours of the ‘negative’, or the lighter ‘positive’?  They each have their own good qualities, I think. And it’s also a good thing to get 2 cards, from one piece of work!

GIVE IT A TRY!

I hope that you’ll give this stencils with alcohol ink technique a try. Of course, using different stencils with different patterns & size of openings give you lots of variations on results, as well. Have fun with it! If you need to shop for supplies, I’ve added links below.

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