First Impressions - Alcohol Lift Ink

After seeing Tim's demo of Rangers new Alcohol Lift Ink back in late June (see the video below), I knew it was something that I wanted to add to my distress collection. I had to wait for a couple of weeks for my ink to arrive and it did this morning WHOOO HOOO! After I'd got over my excitement I set to having a go and this is what I discovered...

In my Maybe Someday box I had some alcohol ink projects that I'd done a while ago, probably 3 years ago. I'd used shades of red, green and some gold mixative on glossy coated paper. I followed what Tim said in his video and the tips that Paula Cheney gave in her blog on Alcohol Lift Ink and I had mixed feelings. Transfering the ink to another piece of paper was a resounding success - I used some Neenah Classic Crest Solar White cardstock. But despite dabbing and buffing like a boss, the 'ghost' image on my original alcohol piece was not as vibrant as I thought it would be.

I'm not sure if it was down to the mixative, the fact that the piece I used had been inked years ago, or the fact that it was photo glossy paper that made it not work. I'll try again on the same paper but I won't add mixative and see what happens. I'll also try double stamping to see if it lightens things more. I was a little crest fallen, but I'd seen fab results on Yupo and luckily I have some in, not the Ranger kind, so again my results may differ, FYI the brand I used was 'Legion Yupo Medium'.

I used 4 colours of alcohol ink for the Yupo panel: - Valencia, Sunset Orange, Sunshine Yellow & Pitch Black. I allowed the inked yupo to dry, then set about stamping my image with the lift ink. I transferred the image and WOW, again I stamped on to Neenah, I then set about dabbing with a paper towel, the 'dab' technique I used is a firm press, move to another area and dab press, don't slide though or you'll smudge. Once you've dabbed all the lift ink, lift your project and check that there is no wet ink left on it. If there isn't, buff with a cloth, I used an old soft t-shirt, well it is old now 😂😂😂

If you look closely at the image by clicking on it to expand, you can see the difference, myself I suspect that the formula for the lift ink resonates more with Yupo paper more than glossy paper, but I still have to practice. I did notice that the stamped image is sharper than the ghost image, again that could be down to my technique, but its a cool effect nontheless! I still have to play with stencils and the refill and a combo of the two, but I wanted to share my first impressions, mainly because I think some people are going to try the lift ink, not use Yupo and be disappointed. More soon, time to play some more 😍😍😍