Tim Holtz Stamper's Anonymous Summer 2024 - Sign Painter Embroidery Alcohol Ink Cards

I'm back again this week with another make from the Tim Holtz Stamper's Anonymous Everyday 2 Summer 2024 Release, this time with a series of cards made with Alcohol Ink from Ranger, and using the Sign Painter and Embroidery Stamp Sets. I did the Lift Ink Technique with these, and had so much Alcohol Ink left on the stamps that I was able to do three stampings...I could have actually done another I think. What a great way to make several themed cards at once! I absolutely LOVE the artsy feel of these. Enjoy!

Cut a piece of White Yupo to 3.5 x 5 inches. Go ahead and cut at least one Alcohol Ink Cardstock (Glossy) to the same size (I ended up with three.), and set those aside for now. Gather your Alcohol Inks in colors of the sky and grass. I used Shell Pink, Purple Twilight, Aquamarine, Aqua, and Cloudy Blue for the sky, and Limeade, Botanical, Everglades, Bottle, and Clover for the grass area, plus you need Blending Solution, and an Alcohol Ink Applicator with two felts. Apply a clean felt to the tool and taking the sky colors, apply lines of ink of each of the 5 colors on the felt, and then add a line of the Blending Solution to the middle of the color lines. Pounce with over the top area of the Yupo (vertically) covering the white until you like the look. To achieve bubble looking designs, blow on the ink as you pounce to make it dry faster and create the bubbles. Remove the felt and add a clean one. Add the grass colors the same as you did the other and then the Blending Solution. Pounce the color over the bottom area. Cap up all the inks as you are finished with them for now.

Place the Alcohol Inked Yupo in the stamp platform. Take the Sign Painter Stamp Set and gather the first 6 letters of alphabet and first 6 numbers, and arrange them on the Yupo in 4 lines with three letters or numbers in each going in order, and close the lid to secure the stamps. Have everything else ready so you can work efficiently and sort of quickly…pieces of Glossy that you set aside above, Alcohol Lift Ink, and paper towels.

Ink over the stamps well with the Alcohol Lift Ink. Close the lid and stamp firmly and hold for a good 10 seconds on the Yupo. Open the lid and carefully remove the Yupo, setting it aside, and add a Glossy in its place and close the lid and stamp firmly for at least 5 seconds. Lift the lid, admire the print, and then remove this and add the Yupo back on. Ink the stamps lightly again with the Lift and stamp again onto the Yupo like before. Remove and replace with another Glossy. Repeat again if you wish. I could of actually done 4 or 5 total. Once ready, place the Yupo back in and add a paper towel over the top and close the lid and press firmly. You will see on the paper towel that there was still ink on the stamps, which means you could have done more. You can separate the layers of the paper towel and use that on a mixed media piece FYI.  Reposition the paper towel and stamp again. Remove the Yupo and softly buff the Yupo with the paper towels to remove all the Lift revealing a pretty white space behind. Clean your stamps carefully with a bit of water BUT LEAVE THEM on the platform.

This step is just a suggestion and something you can keep in mind for future if you don’t want to do it. You can ink on glossy with an Ink Blending Tool and any transparent ink and still see any image under the ink, BUT sometimes the new inks can color over the images and you might not want that. To prevent any altering of color on the images before inking you can use Watermark Resist to protect the images. To do so, place one Glossy at a time back in the platform and ink the stamps with Watermark Resist from Ranger, and stamp onto the Glossy coating the images on the paper. Remove and do the others if you wish. Lightly ink over the top of the Glossy with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and an Ink Blending Tool, then do the bottom half with Twisted Citron and Rustic Wilderness for a nice blended look. Use a paper towel to wipe off any Watermark Resist. In this photo the 3^rd Lifted piece on the right DOES NOT have the resist and the 2^nd Lifted piece on the left DOES. You can see the difference in the colors on the letters and numbers as the ink altered the colors underneath slightly  and even gave it a cloudy look. So it’s up to you whether or not to do this. Clean the stamps with water carefully but leave them in place on the platform just in case you need them for later to fix things, trust me. 

Place one of Glossy pieces (probably the 1^st Lifted piece) into another platform if you have it. If you don’t have another, there is probably room on the other one for one of the flowers. Take the Embroidery Stamp Set, select a flower and place it on the Glossy where you want it and close the door to secure it. Stamp the image in a light colored ink so that you can see all the parts of the image on the paper just for reference to help on the next part. I used Frayed Burlap Archival Ink. Leave the stamp in place as you will stamp your final image in Black Soot when you finished with the next part. Repeat on the other Glossy pieces or if room on the platform add another flower for the other pieces, like I did. For the YUPO, the paper is too dark for Frayed Burlap so you will have to use Black Soot, and then restamp in Black Soot later on again as the ink will be pretty covered up after the next part. Even though the stamps have flowers, I thought it would be fun to make Alcohol Ink splatters behind them for a more artsy look. Back in the day we used Compressed Air in can to splatter out the Alcohol Ink for flowers, sunshines, fireworks, or abstract pieces, but Tim has a special blower that makes it a lot easier and controllable and less frightening as the canned air was violent, LOL! But it was fun. I started with a sunshine first opposite the top of the flower. Using Dandelion Alcohol Ink, I added one drop to the paper where the center would be and then used the Alcohol Ink Air Blower to move the color around with the intent of getting it to be a circle with splatter lines coming from all around the border. I guess I pump too hard because that rarely happens, and it is usually misshapen. So I add another drop and try to get it to blow another way, and continue until I get a nice sunshine look. Once I do, I add one drop of the Blending Solution to the very center and just let it do its thing, no blowing this time.  It will make a perfect circle as long as your paper is flat and on a flat surface, and it will spread evenly pushing the ink underneath as it goes to create a darker border of color and rim of the sun. So cool, right?!! When you do this on the Yupo it will be much easier as the ink moves well on the paper and pushes any other ink out of the way so it will only take a drop or two. Once your sun is added, work on the flowers. I used Flamingo Alcohol Ink on all the larger flowers. Add a drop at a time where a flower will be (that is why the stamped image is there so you know where the flowers will be.) and blow to create the splatters. The bigger the flower the more ink added to make it larger. Once you like the look, you can add that drop of Blending Solution to the center to create a halo of color behind where the flower will be if you want. Do all the flowers you want. Since the flowers are all on one side of the paper I tried to balance it out by adding splatters of green on the other side for a leaf feel, and I used Limeade. Remember the ink moves easier on the YUPO so it doesn’t take much and the splatters really travel. As you can see on mine, I got a little crazy and covered up a lot, my Flamingo turned a deep purple with the ink underneath. I loved the color, but wanted you to note the change in color as I didn’t use another color. To help bring my resist back on the Yupo, I restamped the letters and numbers with the Lift Ink one time on the Yupo only and used a scrap paper for the lift. That is why it’s good to leave those lifted stamps in place until all is said and done. Once you have all the flowers, stamp the flower again this time Black Soot, as well as the sentiment.

I wanted more color and detail, especially on the Yupo as all the stems and leaves were lost on the dark background, so I decided to paint with the Alcohol Ink. Using a palette with tiny open wells for the ink, I added a few drops of Limeade in one and a drop of Blending Solution and mixed it up with any Alcohol Ink Paintbrush (bristles are more stable for Alcohol Inks than regular ones are) and started on the stems and leaves. The Flamingo from the flower bursts mixed in to create an olive green which I loved so I continued to pull in the pink, and colored all the stems and leaves that way. On the Yupo the ink will like to spread so work in the thinnest lines you can especially on the narrow parts. Since the Limeade turned olive with the pink, and the pink on Yupo was now dark purple I decided to color in the flower petals with a light pink pulling in the darker, so I used Shell Pink only. It made red on some and hot pink on some and then dusty pink on the Yupo. I added Dandelion to the centers of the flowers. I had to restamp the flower on the Yupo as I covered up some of the stamp with the ink. I also used a black pen to touch up some stamp lines on a few places. Using a white pen of choice (I like a Gelly Roll) add some highlight lines on the flower petals and dots to the centers of the flowers for a little detail. Outline the letters if you wish and any leaf areas to finish up. Mount the cards on black cardstock leaving about 1/16 inch border, and then white cardstock leaving the same border amount, and then onto a Kraft Cardstock card base cut and folded to 4 x 5.5 inches, or just use a white card base instead of Kraft and having to mount white cardstock. 

Supplies:

(Paper Trimmer, Stamp Platform, Alcohol Ink Applicator, Ink Blending Tool, Alcohol Ink Air Blower, Detail Paint Brush, Alcohol Ink Palette)

-Stamper’s Anonymous Tim Holtz Stamp Set: Sign Painter, Embroidery, Floristry

-Ranger Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink Yupo, Alcohol Ink Cardstock

-Ranger Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink: Shell Pink, Purple Twilight, Aquamarine, Aqua, Cloudy Blue, Limeade, Botanical, Everglades, Bottle, Clover, Dandelion, Flamingo

-Ranger Tim Holtz Alcohol Blending Solution

-Ranger Tim Holtz Alcohol Lift Ink

-Ranger Watermark Resist

-Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink: Tumbled Glass, Twisted Citron, Rustic Wilderness

-Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Archival Ink: Frayed Burlap, Black Soot

-Ranger Surfaces: Kraft Cardstock, Black Cardstock

-Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Mixed Media Heavystock: White

Thank you so much for stopping by. I've got two more makes to show you, and the next one will be on Saturday. Until then, I hope your hands get creatively dirty soon!