Wonderful Walnut Ink!

Hi All,
Now I could have come up with as many W alliterations as possible (I had to google the word Alliteration to make sure I had the meaning right! heheh)... wonderfully wacky wild walnut.. but lets just get straight to the point (come'on Kathleen! get to it!) how to use:

Walnut Ink

Last night at our Product Preview: Core'dinations "It's what's inside that counts" (so fun!) our lucky participants received among other things, a Walnut Ink sample to take away.

The brand we stock are the Walnut Ink Crystals by Tsukineko and yes, Walnut ink really is made from walnut husks! Used at a high strength it is a favourite among Calligraphers but for scrapbooky, card makey, altery, collagey (do made up words with y's on the end count as an alliteration too???) purposes we generally use it much more dilluted to create a vintage or aged effect.

The instructions are: 1 level teaspoon of crystals per 1/2 cup of hot water.
To be honest, I never measure. I have a feeling this is actually stronger than I would make it. Start off with putting your sample sized portion into a small tupperware (one of those smallest Gladware containers would be perfect and add about 1/4 cup of hot water and dissolve. Then on a scrap piece of paper brush or sponge a little of the ink to see how dark it comes out. You can then add more water to dillute further if desired. I usually go for a med - light brown/tan. The neat thing is this stuff stores forever! I just keep adding more crystals and more water... perhaps not the 'right' way, but it works :)

Ideas for using Walnut Ink:

• Create aged paper from white paper (sponging).
• Tone down a too bright paper (also sponging)
• Paint or draw a design with the ink (ink pens, water brushes filled with ink, regular paint brushes)
• Drip ink spots and dots for a vintage effect.
• Dust with crystals and spritz with water - super cool.

Here's a layout I did a few years ago for the Book of Me series of classes we were running. The background started off as just plain cream cardstock but I wanted it to appear like an old newspaper so I sponged it with walnut ink and then added darker walnut ink splotches for good measure.

Hmmm... if you read the layout you can work out how old I am... but you wouldn't do that would you? Hey! I can hear you counting!! hehee.. ok don't tell though will you :)
By the way, just for interests sake - see that title? hand cut with a scalpel... that was BEFORE the days of the Cricut and Cuttlebug! To make your own layout like this HERE is an interesting website where you can select a date of your choosing and it brings up historical events.

And if you wanted to make your own walnut ink from scratch HERE'S another interesting website. Where you would come up with a five gallon bucket of black walnuts I'm not too sure!

Anyways I hope that gets you started with inking! If you didn't make it to our Preview Event last night we made up a few extra sample containers. They are in store now and are just $1. Alternatively the lovely big jars of ink crystals are also available - 56g for $17.95

Byes for now!
~Kathleen