hi there this is kate with tested and today i want to talk to you about a fun tool tip i have where i
make my own alcohol inks now if you've never used alcohol ink i guess the best way to describe it is
liquid sharpie a sharpie is alcohol-based ink so if you think of it in that terms you know it's
not going to be water-soluble it works really well on non-porous materials so the way i got
into this is i actually do some glass art in my spare time and when you apply alcohol inks
to glass it has a really cool effect it looks kind of like watercolors and it dries solid
and like i said it's pretty it's pretty rugged so you can buy alcohol inks pre-made i found that
they are very expensive and i'm somebody who likes to have a wide range of color options and when
you're limited to you know it's a 60 dollar kit for only 24 colors that just doesn't jive with me
when i found out that you could make your own for very cheap and really customize your color palette
i was super into it so i got to work what's cool is that all you need is obviously alcohol as
your base you need to have some canisters or some sort of container to keep your paint in
these are quite large alcohol inks when you buy them are in tiny little dropper bottles
so any sort of glass bottle small plastic thing any kind of recyclable container you find is
great i like to have ones that have droppers in them so that i can use that as an applicator but
teach their own if you find you want to use brushes to apply yours that's fine too
and then to add to your alcohol dried up markers my local reuse store has a giant dresser full of
dried up markers they're available to teachers or to anybody who can find a use for them and i
found that all you need to do is take them apart pull the felt out pop them in the bottle with
the alcohol let them sit a few hours preferably overnight and you're good to go for example these
are two colors that i made about 24 hours ago so i took a few different colors i cut out their felt i
popped them in the jar i poured some alcohol over them and i let them sit overnight then i removed
the felt i made sure to squeeze out any extra juices and pigment that was in there and this is
what i'm left with if you were to try and make them and use them right away they might not be
strong enough they might not be saturated enough so best to give them a bit of time to sit today
we will show the process of making new colors but we'll probably do an example with these that i
made yesterday one of the benefits of making your own alcohol inks is that you get to choose exactly
which color you're making so as opposed to oh i'm just going to make this bright yellow well what
if i wanted it to be a little bit darker if i add a few of these oranges to it maybe i'll come out
with a bit of a gold color now since you're making it yourself there's not going to be a guaranteed
outcome you're going to have to experiment a bit but i kind of find that that's fun so i think it's
my first color i'm going to be doing a yellow with some orange so maybe a gold for my second color
i'm going to do a bit of a green i'm going to mix in some of this lighter seafoam with some of these
darker olives and just see what we get again like i said the benefit of this is that you could take
something that you think is completely dry and dead that you would normally be throwing in the
trash and this is a way to really sap all the rest of the pigment out of it another benefit to it is
at least crayola markers on their website claim to be made of a type of plastic that is recyclable
now with the stuff that's inside of it it's not so in this process of removing the felt and the inner
contents of it you might want to still throw away the cap and the end piece here but this whole body
now can be recycled obviously check and make sure with whatever kinds of markers you're using um so
that you're not just wish cycling and hoping that the stuff you put in the recycle is getting reused
but this could be another good way of trying to really make full use of something before you throw
it away all right for this part of it as we break down the markers first and foremost you want to
put some gloves on if you have them otherwise you are going to have very colorful fingers uh
next step is i like to take something like a matte knife you can also use a pair of pliers whatever
to pry off this end cap you can also remove this piece here i like to leave the cap on while i
take this back part off just so that if i'm moving around like this i'm not you know leaving any ink
behind just in case there's some pigment there so on a crayola you will notice there's a seam
around this back part here this is actually an end cap so what i like to do is take the blade
of my mat knife and get it in here and start to wedge it in and i start to roll the marker
and let that start to work its way open again i'm not necessarily cutting anything i'm just
using the fact that this blade is thin to allow me to get in there and pry off the end there
there you go let's see how it's mostly coming out at this point at that point i just pull it off
there's your end cap again this is a small enough piece this should probably be thrown in the trash
as opposed to trying to recycle it set that to the side take off your cap set that to the side
take a pair of needle nose pliers i like these because they're very long and very thin so if you
look at the end there you'll see your felt what you want to do is get your needle nose in there
and pry on either side there we go we are going to be using this so i take my bottle
open it up this is a bit long for the kind of bottle that i'm using at the moment
and if i put too many in here because this is a small neck i'm not going to be able to get it out
if you want to use a larger receptacle to start with sometimes i'll use like an
old peanut butter jar something like that you can totally leave them whole for this purpose
i'm going to cut this in half you can just use normal scissors cut pop them in good to go and
then i also pull the nib off just because that has some pigment in it as well so it doesn't hurt
to throw that in and get any bit of that that's left over now you're left with an empty hollow
plastic tube body which like i said should be recyclable do your research make sure your local
area accepts them make sure it's made of the material you think it is on to the next ones
all right i have filled both of these up i tend to do i don't know four to five markers per
batch and then i eyeball it with the alcohol ink again like this is all very experimental
play around with how saturated you find they get and see what works for you since i normally only
want a little bit and these are large bottles i really don't fill them up all the way all you
need is to have a bit of alcohol in the bottom and make sure one end of your felt is touching
there and it'll be like a straw and it'll suck down so you do not have to cover the top of it
it will completely saturate through it so i'm going to pour some through here all right
i'm thinking this is probably a good amount if you need to start to wiggle it make sure you
push anything down as you can see here some of the pigment is already getting pulled out
of this felt so it works very quickly the process starts to begin it needs to sit
a while to get to full saturation but the process starts right away
there you go now i'm going to put the lids on these to make sure i get minimal
evaporation again this is alcohol which likes to evaporate quickly and i'm gonna let these sit
periodically i might come give them a little shake make sure that everything is coated and absorbing
in that sense otherwise we're gonna let these sit again at least i would say four hours i give them
overnight the longer they sit the stronger they're gonna become so try not to rush it give it some
time after these have sat for enough time the last step will be to remove all of your felt pieces
and as you take them out make sure you squeeze out any of the last remaining pigment and that
will ensure that you've left all of the pigment in there with it and you'll end up with something
kind of like this a cup full of junk this can all be thrown away obviously if you want
to try and get anything more out of it you're welcome to try a new jar and another batch of
alcohol but at some point it's going to be less and less and less saturated but
so pretty much again just periodically give these a shake and that should be good
now if you're curious to see what some of the alcohol inks will look like
i brought in an example here there was an old candle holder that had these hanging off of it
that i found at a junk store so since glass is a really good material to use alcohol inks on i
thought we could try that i'm going to use a bit of this pink pigment that i mixed up
and brush it on there and let's see if we can make it look like a pink crystal
well there you go since the alcohol ink is so translucent you end up with a
really great see-through paint that uh works on something like this it's really more of a tint
so that's a good example of its use on glass i think we might have another use coming up
hey kate i heard you were working on a project i'm sorry i wanted to barge into your video
oh of course because i thought this might be a cool application of your alcohol image
so i have here are some 3d printed um they're like fantasy eel creatures and uh what's interesting
with this 3d print is i printed it in a clear resin and it's also hollowed out so as opposed
to maybe painting the outside one thing i thought we could try is perhaps maybe trying to paint the
inside i like this idea let's uh i think i think we can definitely have some fun with this and uh
fortunately insa built into the print model is a little mounting hole there you go and i think i've
plugged up the other holes where i drained some of like uh the alcohol wash when i was cleaning this
piece but i believe if we just try yeah stripping some of these alcohol inks into the cavity of the
creature and maybe do a little bit of a swirl round yeah i have no idea how it's gonna look
but this could be fun it could be and the fact that we have the dropper built in here that should
make an easy application awesome so i'm gonna put on some gloves and we got two eels here you have
two colors ready nice and let's try it right so how much ink should we put anything you know um
well first i'm gonna recommend before you unscrew it give it a little shake make sure that it's good
and mixed up now i'm just gonna say you know do your normal squeeze out let it suck some up
i always give it a little tap on the end there so it's not dripping too much
and then i'm just gonna put a few drops in and see how it rolls and spreads and go from there
oh wow that's so cool
wow and see you'll only get a certain amount of coverage before it starts to evaporate and get
sticky so that'll tell you how much more you need and in what areas and how fast you need to move
yes this could really become um there's an art to how you rotate it exactly it's kind of like roto
casting when you're in model making or mold making and you might notice too if you go back over a
spot where you've already had some application there's a potential for the pigment to get darker
and i also want to say don't worry too much about spilling out onto the outside of the print
because obviously this cleans up so easily with alcohol that at the end you can just
wipe the outside with a wet rag with alcohol and it'll clean up any mess
oh my gosh i can already imagine mixing colors in here oh yeah a base color of something and
then accenting with a secondary color get like a little tie-dye galaxy effect going
i'm working on filling the last of my head
something you pointed out of course is there are supports on the inside of this model so those
are gonna take up the dye as well um it doesn't look like it it shows too much yeah i was kind
of wondering if it would and i'm not seeing too much i thought maybe the supports would take up
more than the outside would and it would look funny but i really don't see too much going on
i do like that it's both a translucent skin and a translucent interior because obviously you
could try this with an opaque paint on the inside and you'd still have a translucent skin but yeah
i like that i mean i would assume if you put a light near this this whole thing's gonna glow
right right and again there's a whole built in right there yeah just sticking led in there uh
i've done experiments where um in the cavity of a model i've done for opaqueness like a rubbing buff
oh but also rum buff it's tough to get in all the nooks and crannies yeah you can either get
everywhere or or not yeah so i wonder if maybe like this this um this type of viscosity is you
got a supplement sure first and then fill up any nooks and crannies yeah similar tinted color all
right i've got a little bit of excess alcohol ink around my entry point here and where i've
let it flow out so i'm going to put a little bit of alcohol on this paper towel and just use that
to wipe off any of the excess pigment also if you notice that there's still some alcohol ink inside
swap like sloshing around you can try to tilt your model around get that to come out otherwise
you might end up with some darker pools in places but then again maybe that's what you want so along
with this along those same lines of cleaning up the outside of your piece any of the tools that
you've used along this process that have gotten some pigment on them from the markers or anything
just take a rag put some alcohol on there and then wipe that pigment right off and you're good as new
whoa kate that is such a cool effect it is wow it turned out so interestingly and as we're doing
this like ideas just start forming of different ways to use the alcohol inks um you hit it with
some clear coat which for this type of resin it just fills in some of those layer lines and that's
what gives it the shine it turned a crystal clear after that yeah and you can apply more layers of
clear coat as well just to keep that shine but i i just love how the end effect is that the they both
look like they could glow yes it's so translucent it's so vibrant and it's coming from the inside
it's just so neat that you have that clear layer on the outside very cool nice little
neat demonstration experiment with these alcohol inks that you made yes and your links to the
the products that you use in the description and comments below but awesome job kate thank you and
again if anybody tries this at home please let me know what you like to use alcohol inks for there's
so many different uses i would love to see them in the wild thank you guys for watching that video if
you'd like to further support us at tested you can do so by buying some merch from us in our store
a link is below but i wanted to tell you that for the first time we are releasing a
discounted bundle of tested merch specifically our original five demerit badges these are ways
in which every maker screws up so we've got the measure once cursed twice uh releasing
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bit 3d printer going all flag spaghetti monster on you and my personal most common one cutting
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demerit badges i'm going to sew these to my apron oh that actually would make a good one day build