Flower photography, crafts and playing with alcohol inks

Orange Crocosmia flowers.

The UK heatwave has fizzled out (for now, with the current climate who knows what will actually happen), it’s under 20°C, grey and windy. I am a very happy bunny as far as that goes, just feeling generally tired. Being able to sleep without wanting to climb out of my own skin to cool off will probably help. Creatively speaking I got a few photos taken before it rained again, so I’m sharing a few here, the rest are up on Flickr. Photos below, along with crafty bits.

 

Crafting-wise I’ve not done much actual stuff, but I’ve been plotting (including one project I want to do an Instructable for), and watching crafting videos on YouTube because they’re interesting, informative and inspirational. (Also, apparently, alliterative). I may well be making Christmas cards this year, which would make the task more fun than filling out the same list in a rush before the postal deadline using store-bought cards. We shall see.

Ranger alcohol inks.I recently purchased some Ranger alcohol inks. These things are pretty great, and worryingly addictive. They’re basically inks that go all explodey and interact with each other on non-porous surfaces.

The first experiment I did was a marbling project, just dropping them in water and dropping paper in there. I liked the results, but there are much better ways to do marbling, so I won’t be doing this again unless there’s a pressing reason to.

The second was on yupo paper, which is basically a smooth, synthetic paper designed for this kind of thing. It was ridiculously fun, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you need to work very hard to screw up with this (gusts of wind blowing pieces that aren’t dry where they shouldn’t be aside). I’ll definitely be using these more, and want to play with them on crockery, too.

The last experiment was on a polystyrene pizza board (Aldi, sourdough pizza base, tomato and buffalo mozzarella, very tasty)I put aside from dinner. The results are pretty cool, though I’m not sure what I’d actually find use for it for. You never know.

Marbled paper made with alcohol inks. Alcohol inks on yupo paper. Alcohol inks on yupo paper. Alcohol inks on polystyrene.
 

And on a final crafty note, the deadline for the Instructables Stick It! contest is drawing to a close, so if you want to help me win some crafty stuff, please head on over to my Papier Mache and String Storage Pods (aka Vaark chairs) Instructable, scroll down to the bottom, and give the vote button a click.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.