CTMH: Re-Inker Isn't Just For Re-Inking

Oh, what fun I'm having posting every day this week.  Have you taken advantage of my special week, yet?  Email or call me to find out what's so special about these posts.  But don't wait because it's over tomorrow!

Today, I'm going to give you a bit of a sneak peek at some brand new paper that you will be able to purchase beginning February 1st.  I've also had lots of fun with re-inker.  What is this stuff?  Well, it's a little bottle used to add ink to your ink pads once that nice juicy feel goes away and your images aren't inking up nicely anymore. Instead of buying a whole new ink pad (What do you do with the old one, anyway?), just purchase a bottle of re-inker.  It will last for a LOOONG time if that's all you use it for.  But did you know that re-inker can be used for lots of other things, too?

I made up a little tutorial (my first one!) to show you how to use your re-inker to made your own little ink pad, called a puddle pad.  First, choose two or three different colours of re-inker that matches your paper.  I've only got two because I'm only just starting to learn about all the neat things you can do with re-inker so I don't have too many colours yet.  I'm using Smoothie and Cocoa.  You'll also need a few baby wipes, folded and placed in a tray.

Start with the darkest colour and just put drops onto the baby wipe, making sure you're covering an area large enough for your stamp plus a bit.

Then add your other colours, darkest to lightest.  Don't worry if there's some empty spaces between the drops because they'll all blend together.

Then stamp away.  Move your stamp around a tiny bit to get some more blending of colours.  Here you can see my three different tries.  Neat isn't it?

Now, you're ready to add it to your project.  And you're also ready to see the next thing you can do with re-inker!

We have a fabulous new product called the spray pen.  It's such a neat little tool.  You can mix water, re-inker, and Create-a-Shade Pearl Paint to spray a wonderful shimmering mist on your project.  In the following photo, you can see that I've already added water and re-inker to my spray pen.

When you add the paint, your mixture will look lighter.  How much of each you add is up to you.  Use the lines on the side to help you.  One suggestion is to add water until the 7th line, re-inker until it reaches the 9th and 3 drops of paint.  That creates quite a bit of mixture so if you're just using it for a small project, just use less.

Then spray your project.  Make sure you protect your work area and even practice a bit on a scrap piece of paper so you know how hard to press for the effect you want.  I covered the back of my card as well.

And here is my assembled card.  I love the finished product!

The re-inker just added such a nice polished look to my card.  I used paper from the new Mayberry Level 2 kit.  It might be my favourite from the 8 new paper packs in the new Idea Book!  I used the January Stamp-of-the-Month, which you can still order.  I  used my craft knife to cut around the top wing and pop it out a bit.  You can see that in the next photo.  I added some Mocha Opaques and my card was finished.  See that wonderful shimmer?

 

So, use your re-inker for something special and tell me what you did.  I'd love to learn some more neat techniques.

Still don't know why I keep bolding some words?  Ask and you shall know...

Happy Creating!