Review: Simon Hurley Dye Inks

Photo used with the kind permission of Simon Hurley

Remember that band New Kids on the Block? My friend Nicola was a huge fan, I wasn't, never really got boy bands once I grew up, in my day it was The Osmond's and then The Bay City Rollers (showing my age now lol!) So what has that opening sentence got to do with crafting? Well as far as I'm concerned there is a new kid on the crafting block and he released the first wave of his own brand of brilliant crafting goodness last year and more is still to come in 2020.

I'm referring of course to Simon Hurley, I say he's a new crafter on the block but this young dude has been crafting since the tender age of 10 when he first starting playing with alcohol and distress inks, he's now 16 coming on 17, has graduated college and is making a career out of inspiring crafters like me all over the world, with his own special brand of crafting enthusiasm and now inks, stamps, stencils and more. I've been watching this talented young man on YouTube since 2015, but he's been uploading videos there since 2014. I discovered him whilst watching Jennifer McGuire, another of my favourite American crafters, over on YouTube.

The video I was watching of Jennifer's finished playing and one of Simon's early videos Cardmaking Life Hacks You NEED to know! began autoplaying, initially my instant reaction as this young peppy voice burst out of my PC screen was "Who the freckle is this boy, and what the heck can he teach me about crafting or bring to my crafting experience?" that's the polite version 😉 But the young dude hooked me just 0.06 seconds in to his video with his "Wittle bit easier" line and I've been a fan ever since. By the end of watching that video Simon had infected me with his enthusiasm, but more importantly he'd taught this old crafter that crafting isn't something that is just for the older generation of the female persuasion, crafting is for any age and sex, and the younger generation can inspire and enthuse others just as well as the older generation.

I could wax lyrical about Simon's style and what he brings to the crafting table, but his creative genius and skill, coupled with the way he's taking the American crafting world by storm speaks for itself. I'm hoping that he takes the UK crafting world by storm as well because it would be lovely to attend a workshop here in the UK.

Simon's aim is to redress the balance in the industry from focusing on feminine crafting supplies to add products with a more masculine feel, to appeal to male crafters and potential male crafters and to give us female crafters more tools to make the dreaded male cards (I'm paraphrasing here), his stamps and style aren't just aimed at female crafters they appeal to all.

Lets skip forward to January 2019 and Simon launched his first batch of stamps, stencils and inks. The ink queen that I am knew after seeing his first demo that I had to have ALL the inks, and recognised that there is something fun and fresh about the stamps and stencils coupled with an element of humour that takes me back to a time when life was less stressful. They are perfect for creating cards for the men folk in my life as well and they are fun to use.

I started out with just Simon's first batch of inks, I bought 3 and tried them out and I had a major 'WOW!' moment. I have been a big fan of Tim's Distress Inks since I discovered them back in 2014 and I didn't think that they would ever be toppled off their crafty throne, but they have been, sorry Tim!

Now don't get me wrong, I still use my distress inks and always will, but Simon's dye inks are a DREAM to use, they blend wonderfully, work with water based techniques and unlike distress inks they stamp lovely and crisp, the ink formula also means you can stamp with the inks and then use alcohol markers like Copic's to colour the stamped images and the ink doesn't bleed! So they are a perfect all round ink and the colours are fabulous.

I printed off the Colour Swatch Chart from the Ranger Ink website and bought the inks a few at a time until I had the full set, the chart has to be expanded now so I can add the next 6 colours to it which I now own, and there are more to come in the not to distant future (I'm holding out hopes for a darker blue and brown and a black pretty please and maybe a lovely Pumpkin orange colour 😉), there has also been anew ink added to the line called 'Prom Queen' an absolutely gorgeous shade of bright fuchsia pink added recently, but so far I haven't been able to get hold of it here in the UK or the re-inkers for the 6 new colours 😭

Back in November I purchased one of his stamp sets called 'Caroling Squad' and made a batch of fun cards to send to friends and family. From there I progressed to buying some of Simon's background stamps and stencils, and in January I picked up 4 stamp sets, all 12 re-inkers and another background stamp in the Buddly Crafts January sale.

Only it turned out that they were clearing out Simon's range 😪, probably because not enough people in the UK have heard about his inks and stamps. That made me very sad because there are only a couple of stores in the UK that I know of that stock Simon's range, and buying the stuff from the States works out too expensive when you have to pay shipping for me sadly, it can sometimes triple the cost if you place a large order.

I'm hoping that Buddly will rethink stocking Simon's products, or some other UK store will stock them like Art from the Heart who already stock products for all the designers that work with Ranger except Simon! His line would be a perfect addition so let Ben at AFTA know you'd like to buy Simon Hurley products from them! The only other stockist I know of in the UK is Craft Stash but they tend to go out of stock rather quickly.

Last year I contacted Simon via Facebook to let him know about a typo on the Ranger Colour Chart for the swatch for 'Triple Berry', it reads Tripple Berry (I can't help it, its my inner proof reader) and as of the second download for the next batch of colours it still hasn't been corrected lol!

He replied and was really nice so I threw caution to the wind and sent him a Facebook friend request, which he graciously accepted and has since commented on a couple of my posts and did me the honour of sharing one as well, which was pretty damn awesome.

Simon Hurley inks tick all the boxes for me, and if your new to inks and have a limited budget so need a set of inks that have everything (well almost everything - we need a black ink Simon!!!) then I encourage you to give these inks a try because they are useful for so many techniques.

My favourite way to use them is straight forward blending, I use blending brushes and it is so easy to lay down the colour and blend them together, the colours are so vibrant, as I said before I love my distress inks but the way the colour lay down with Simon's inks is like they switch a light on, they are so vivid and alive, distress inks although colourful often have the 'light off' feel to them and aren't as vibrant.

In my wish upon a star card above I combined 'Triple Berry' with 'Clear Skies' and got a gorgeous looking night sky from just two colours! Those two colours melded so well together creating a new darker colour whilst still keeping some of their own colour identity by blending lightly, a light spray of water and lift with a paper towel after 30 seconds lifts away some colour and adds texture and dimension just like distress inks do, The grass was done with 'Later Gator' and 'Overzealous' which alongside 'Clear Skies' and 'Crown Me' are my favourite colours so far, but who am I kidding I love them all lol!

Another technique that the inks lend themselves to is bleaching, on this floral card I layered 'Clear Skies', 'Triple Berry', 'Rosie Cheeks' and 'Bee Sting' in rows over a white heat embossed image. I then used household bleach and a water brush on the details of the flower and you can see that the colours changed slightly either becoming lighter or they turned a different hue.

The inks are fab to use for water colouring images as well, when Simon demonstrates he smooshes the ink pads on his laminate surface, but I have added drops of his re-inkers to a Ranger Distress Ink Palette and pull out a little ink on to the white area of my Media Mat, make my blends on the glass and then paint my images that way.

The re-inkers are also fabulous for adding to shaving foam to create colourful and unique backgrounds and I've added them to texture paste to colour it before adding to a project with excellent results. I really can't wait for more colours to be added to the line, the more colours we have, the more wonderfully colourful projects we can create with them.

I predict as more colours are released I will be using some of the other brands of ink I own like Hero Arts and Lawn Fawn a lot less, price wise Simon's inks are better value as well. I'll be posting some more projects soon using Simon's stamps and stencils so watch this space, in the meantime go check out his website, watch his videos for some inspiration and tips for using these inks, the dude is full of ideas and is a marvellous and inspirational teacher 😍