Alcohol Inked Metal Sign


If you follow the blog, you know I've been on a sign kick, but I really wanted to get some Alcohol Inking in. Truth be told, the first time I saw these metal sign blanks at Dollar Tree, I thought about inking them. I've made a bunch of signs out of these metal sign blanks, but this is the first time I followed my initial instinct and inked one of them.


Over the last two weeks, I've been making signs out of a sheet of white vinyl I cut with several designs. This week's design was from my library of freebie designs.


I used the standard settings for vinyl on my old Silhouette Cameo, but I upped the force to 11 because the Silhouette-branded vinyl is quite thick.


After the designs were cut, I separated each design with scissors. When I was ready to work on this project, I got out my weeding tool and removed the excess vinyl.


The tiny letters at the top were a bit of a pain when I was pulling off the exterior vinyl, but the rest of the design weeded easily.


So now it's time to ink! I taped the twine hanger from the sign with some washi tape to keep it from getting inked up and put a craft mat down on my table. I decided to use T-rex inks for this project and selected colors near each other on the color wheel to keep the ink from turning brown or black.


I started out with Tidal Teal. I put a heavy drop on the sign and used a paintbrush that had been wet with rubbing alcohol to spread the ink around a bit. Then I used a hand bulb blower to spread the wet ink out.


I repeated the process with Amethyst Purple next.


Then I used the Shiraz Red and Dragonfruit Pink to fill in the rest of the sign. At this point, I thought it looked pretty dreadful, but I also knew to trust the process.


I added in some Deep Sea and Glacier Blue and used some drops of rubbing alcohol to separate the colors


I kept adding ink and alcohol and moving it around with the paint brush and blower until I had a pattern that I liked.


After I let the alcohol ink dry for about an hour and then I sprayed it down with some Kamar Varnish to prepare it for the vinyl decal. I cut a piece of transfer tape the size of my decal and folded it in half to find the midpoint.


I applied the transfer tape to the design and rubbed it down to make sure the vinyl stuck well to the tape.


Then I peeled off the paper backing of the vinyl decal.


Then I applied the decal to the sign and rubbed it down.


I peeled the tape back slowly to avoid pulling off any alcohol ink to reveal my sign.


As you can see in this photo, the colors change quite a bit in different lighting and with the reflectiveness of the metal. I was right to think that this was a fun surface for inking. I look forward to the next one!

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