First Impressions: Brea Reese Inks

My local Tuesday Morning closed up shop recently. They had the best craft supply aisle of any of the discount stores, and they'll be missed. Before they closed, though, they had a sale, and I picked up some Brea Reese Alcohol Inks. This is a brand that has been around for a while but I never saw them in stores locally and the sets are priced a bit expensive on Amazon, so I was excited to see a couple sets on sale with an additional store closing discount. 

They only had two colors of sets available, so I snagged them both for about $4.50. They normally go for $7-10 and are more like $12-13 on Amazon, so I was pleased that I could try the inks out for such a reasonable price. One of the sets was your basic starter with Red, Blue, and Yellow. The other was Crimson, Olive Green, and Brown.

I 

In all of my first impression tests, I put a single dot of alcohol ink on a dry ceramic tile and see how it flows with just tipping the tile. It gives me a good idea how thick the ink is and how saturated the color is. The blue was very saturated and liquid enough that it moved around a bit without simply sliding off the tile. It immediately reminded me of Ranger's Indigo--which I have a love-hate relationship with.



After the tilt test, the ink still appeared wet, so I used a hand bulb to blow the ink without any isopropyl alcohol or blending solution. It still moved around a bit which was a sign that it stays wet for a bit.


Then I tested out how it thinned with 90% isopropyl alcohol and used the hand bulb to move the ink around. It moved pretty well with a small amount of alcohol and the colors remained vibrant when thinned.


Then I played around with the rest of the inks. I started another tile to play around with the crimson, olive, brown set. I immediately fell in love with the crimson. What a beautiful shade of red! The brown was a pleasant shade for brown and the olive was, nice enough for an olive--not too brown.


I continued to play around to get a feel for how the inks mixed. They were lovely and vibrant and thinned and moved around well. But, because the colors were very saturated, the inks got dark fast.


So I decided to use some isopropyl to break up the dark areas of the ink. I used a pipette to drip tiny bubbles of alcohol onto the ink.


This ink is lovely, and I hope I am able to find some more in local stores. I think JoAnn's sometimes carries this brand, so I'll have to look there (as if I need any more alcohol ink :)). Brea Reese is definitely another brand of ink that I'd recommend. It was a ton of fun playing around with these inks.

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