Product Highlight

Alcohol Markers

As promised, I will continue to highlight some of our new products. I was so excited to see the CTMH has come up with a new line of alcohol markers. These are such great markers and they really bring your artwork to life when you use them.

Here is a link to a great video about these new markers.

New Alcohol Markers Information and Tips: Now, on to our new alcohol based markers. They color BEAUTIFULLY. Here are a few things to know about them (thanks to Sarah Paige-Gruber and her wonderful downline for compiling this information):

1. They come in all 40 of our color shades

• Each marker comes dual tipped – one end is a brush marker, the other end is a bullet/fine tip
• Markers come in a 2 pack and retail for $5.95. One marker is the true color of the set name and the 2nd marker is a shade darker or lighter than the true color to use for shading and blending.

2. Always store your markers horizontally and shake well before using
3. Alcohol inks are waterproof and can be layered and blended on surfaces other than paper
4. There is bleed-through when using alcohol ink markers. Be sure to use clean scratch paper to protect your surfaces and clean fingers when coloring. Also, plan on layering your colored images on your project if working on paper.
5. To prevent a ‘streaky’ looking image, evenly soak the paper. You have successfully and evenly colored your image if you turn over your paper and it is not blotchy looking
6. Blending Pen with Alcohol markers: The blending pen picks up and moves colors, it is more like an eraser than a ‘blending’ pen. You can use it to create highlights, ‘fade to white’ and fix minor mistakes. The blending pen also ‘pushes’ color away from it.

 It is highly recommended that you use our new Pigment Ink pads and heat set your image prior to coloring. 

Here are a few usage tips:

Marker Blending on Paper     your basic ‘go to’ technique

 1.     Color evenly with your lightest color, smoothly soaking the paper and coloring in circles to avoid streaks.

2.     While base color is still wet, add darker color to one side, lift up at the end of the stroke, leaving more ink in the area you want shaded
3.     Go back over the darker color with your original shade to blend the two and create a smoother look
4.     Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you achieve the shading look that you wanted

Feather Blending – this technique works best with long narrow images such as petals.

1.     Layer first color in one direction, press more firmly at the beginning of your stroke and lift as you go – fill in approx. ¾ of your image with this technique. The ink may only soak through where you have pressed the marker at the darkest part of the image.
2.     Starting on the other side, use the same technique with the opposite color you have chosen.
3.     Repeat layers until you have smoothly transitioned and blended your colors in the middle of the stamped image.

Tips for this technique:

Use the side of the brush not the tip

                                    Lots of light layers work best for this technique
                                    OVERLAP your colors – don’t stop where the colors meet

 Fixing Minor mistakes with a Blending Pen

1. The blending pen ‘pushes’ ink away from it – if your ink bleeds outside of the stamped image, you can color with the blending pen to ‘push’ the ink back inside the line.

·        This works BEST with lighter colors and for small imperfections.