A fun (albeit messy) technique

Hi all, I wanted to share with you a technique I came across recently with regards to my Letraset pens. I avidly read the tutorial posts on the Letraset blog in the hope of learning yet another fun way to use my pretty pens. So when the Metallic Markers came out, so did a new technique (well I say new, it has probably been used with Aquamarkers etc before hand, but to me it was new).

So what is the new technique I hear you cry? Well this is the technique of taking your pens directly to a non stick sheet, and then spraying the ink with water and then taking your chosen cardstock to the ink puddle. Doesn't sound great described like that, but the effects it gives are amazing!

This morning I decided I would play with said technique, using my Metallic Markers and my newer Neon Markers (like watercolour highlighter pens!). I decided to give a quick tutorial for those who might want to give it a try themselves :)

So you need the following:

• A spray bottle with water
• Neon/Metallic/Aqua markers (take your pick from what you have in your stash)
• Non stick sheet (or other cleanable surface, a large acrylic block or a tile could be just as effective)
• Cardstock (for my experiments I used Artist Trading Card blanks, mainly canvas)

You should be able to find these from any Ranger stockist, just do an online search:) 

Now, you want to pick a couple of colours to work with. For this demonstration I used Electric Pink and Radiant Orange, and I just scribbled on my mat, so it looked a bit like this: 

I then sprayed it with my water bottle:

So my mat looked like this:

I then took my ATC to the ink and moved it around a little to blend the colours a bit. They looked like this:

The one on the left was the first one I did, so that has the most vibrancy to the colour. The one on the right was the second down, and although the colour is still relatively bright, it isn't as vibrant as the first and the colours are more blended.

Here are a few more that I made this morning:

A few are curled because they are still damp. I managed to flatten them out a bit more by heating them with my heat gun and then pressing an acrylic block on top to encourage them to flatten.

I also made a couple of tags using the same technique. On one tag, I clear embossed 3 hearts and then took the tag to the ink. The embossed areas resisted the ink, like so:

I think the colour combination looks amazing. This was once again using the Neon Markers, Electric Pink and Volt Blue, which then in areas merged to create purple.

I then had some excess ink on my mat, so I took a length of white organza to the ink and then dried it with my heat gun. It made it shrink and curl up, but would add great texture to any project.

So that is it. I hope you manage to find this useful, and I hope you have great fun getting messy :)