Check out this Alcohol Marker Tutorial on SCS

As I use alcohol inks for most of my coloring of my cards and I am often asked about my coloring and the pens and techniques I use I thought I would share with you today the link to a fantastic tutorial on alcohol markers that was posted to SCS today.

The techniques in this tutorial are basically what I do for my cards. The only difference is she is using copic markers and I use trias. The techniques will work for any of the alcohol markers that are avail, but like anything some are better than others. Copic seem to be the most popular in the US so even though I use a different brand I would recommend them.

Tutorial - Coloring Grosgrain using Alcohol Markers

Last week while I was creating a card for Allison's sketch challenge, I wanted to use ribbon but didn't have the right color I wanted to use to go with the card. In the past when this has happened I have colored my ribbon using an ink pad (I normally use my fluid chalk pads), this can turn out to be a little messy and you can't put it on your card straight away as the ribbon needs to dry otherwise the ink transfers to the card - yuk!

I got my white ribbon out and for some reason I used my tria marker that I had just used to color in something on that particular card and wow - it was quick and easy to color and looked great and was ready to go on my card straight away. I have had tria's for years so sat wondering why I hadn't tried this before!

Tria's are an alcohol marker, similar to Copic and Prisma which many of you are starting to buy to color with, which is why I thought I would include this tutorial.

You need:

• Alcohol marker eg. Tria; Copic; Prisma etc
• White Grosgrain Ribbon

• Using the broad nib of your marker color over your grosgrain ribbon.
• Once you have colored over the front of your ribbon turn over to make sure the marker has seeped through to the back, if there are places missed color these spots too.
  

Your ribbon is now ready to be used to decorate your card however you wish!

More on Tria's

Yesterday when I posted I was telling you about my tria markers I use to color in with and I was trying to describe the 3 different nibs on the one pen. I am sure I confused some of you who were reading (if anyone was LOL), and to be honest it never occurred to me to take a photo - duh! Sorry I am still new to this blog thing and to be honest hadn't at the time worked out how to put two photos in the one post which is what i would have had to do yesterday. I have since worked that out but don't need it today, but it will help when I am ready to do a tutorial or whatever.

If you look at the photo you can see the difference in the nibs.
1. The one closest to the bottom has a ultrafine nib, great for very detailed work or for writing etc.
2. The middle one has a fine, rounded bullet nib - this is the one I use the most often for coloring in areas.
3. The one at the back has a broad chisel nib, this one is good for very large areas.

There are also other nibs you can get, some of mine I have replaced the broad chisel nib with a brush nib which is easier to use close to finer areas but still good for the large areas.

Answering a question

I received a comment on one of my cards yesterday asking me what I used to color in with.

Most of my coloring in is done using tria alcohol markers, these are made by Letraset. I have used these for at least 5 years and I love the effect I can achieve with these. There was a thread over at Splitcoast Stampers forum recently on alcohol markers; they were discussing Copic and Prisma. I haven't used these particular ones before so I can't comment on them, others commenting on that thread were happy with them. The tria's a different to the other two in that they have 3 nibs rather than 2. On mine the fat nib is on one end and then you have a finer nib at the other end, by changing the way you open the lid on this end you can also get a very fine point if you need it. You can also purchase reinkers for these markers, this was actually what they used to use before all these other alcohol inks came on the market by Ranger etc to do various alcohol ink techniques. I like how when you are doing larger areas you don't get the streaks you sometimes to with other markers. To add shadowing I either use a slightly darker color or if I don't have anything darker I use the same color a couple of times over each other, depending on how dark I need it.

Recipe to card:
Stamps: alota Rubber Stamps (all images)
Paper: White; Sun Yellow; Red
Other: Black ink; celeste blue impress ink; tria markers; cloud stencil