Thursday, June 28, 2007

Paper Towel and Reinkers experiment



How fun! I wish I had a rainbow of reinkers in my collection. (Time to save money to get more!)
This is a very easy technique, albeit messy. You will need the following:

*Plain (no patterns) 2 ply paper towels
*A bowl of water
*A 9 x 13 disposable cake baking dish
*A variety of reinkers
*Spritz bottle filled with water
*Brown paper bags
*Latex gloves

Tear about 8 sheets of paper towels and set aside. Put on your gloves. Drop three or four different colors of reinkers all over the bottom of your baking dish, taking care not to add the drops not TOO CLOSE to each other. Spritz with water. Your ink wil run together, and that's OK. Try to have a mix of light and dark colors. Soak one sheet of paper towel and lay nice and flat over the reinkers. Soak the next paper towel sheet and place over the first one. Press down to absorb some of the ink. Keep doing this until you've got all of your paper towels used up. Lay your paper bags flat on a surface where it won't be disturbed. Remove the inked paper towels, one at a time, and lay them over the paper bags. You'll notice that some sheets will be more vibrant than others. That's OK. As they dry, the vibrant colors will fade a little bit. It's neat to have a variety. In the picture below, you'll see a full sheet that's been allowed to dry overnight. I used versafine ink for stamping since it tends not to run. Your towels are porous, so you don't want to use ink that will run too much (if your stamp has fine lines). Also, since you've used 2 ply, you'll have double the number of sheets to work with.

To cut out your stamped image, try to use the sharpest scissors you have or even fabric scissors. To adhere to cardstock or a cardbase, place the adhesive on the caredstock itself, and not the back of the paper towel. You run the risk of tearing your towel if you try to run an adhesive runner or a glue stick on the back of it.

6 comments:

Susan said...

Ethel,
Great technique. I've been playing with painting and dyeing paper towels, so will now try this. I love the spontaneity with this.
Susan T

Anonymous said...

WOW, Ethel these are great. Love this. will have to try it....

dawn

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this! I'm going to have to try it. Love the cards

Sue McGettigan said...

Very fun Ethel, love the bright colors!

Beth Norman-Roberts said...

Gorgeous card, Ethel. You are such a talented lady. I loved your card in the collage swap over at SS.

Stampin' Meg said...

ohhhh I need to try this- it looks very cool!