Alcohol ink experiments

After seeing others working with alcohol inks on metals, of cause, I had to buy some inks too this summer. Haven't done much with them, but have already shown a simple example of faux oxidization on my "imitation bottle cap" charm.

Above you can see another example where I've worked with three different nuances of inks (Pitch Black, Stream and Raisin) in several layers. The base is a rather large brass ox stamping. The same one I used when testing my rusting paint here. In that post you can also find a "before" pic of the stamping.

Haven't sealed it yet -- which I intend to do as the inks can be dissolved by alcohol and other solvents and I don't want that. What I will not do is repeat my first mistake: using a solvent-based spray lacquer. I did use that on my first charm and it utterly changed the pattern made by the inks. It's ok, but not as nice as it was before spraying it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But at least I learn from my mistakes.

I also had fun playing with a simple round brass blank, approx. 19 mm. This one was textured using a ball hammer before I added the inks. Used Stream and Raisin here as well, but they are not fully mixed as in the floral stamping. Sorry about the "artsy" angle, but it looks slightly better when viewed like this so I save a photo eventhough I didn't intend to show it here on the blog (as I wasn't fully pleased with the result).