Playing With Alcohol Inks and Colored Metal Patinas

This weekend I attended a short class on using alcohol inks at the Intergalactic Bead Show in Atlanta.  I have a few inks that were gifts and I also bought Lisa Liddy's Metal Me This brand, which has such beautiful colors.  But I wanted to watch other people use them and learn some tips and tricks.

We used the Ranger Brand in class. Those are teacher samples in the above photo.  I learned with this brand, our teacher felt that they needed some of the metal inks as a base, in order to be really visible.

So we put the base onto brass and copper blanks and then added inks and dried them with the heat gun. 

And sanded our pieces to bring up the embossed patterns.  

I found that true to character, I was most interested in mixing colors and seeing what shades I would get with different techniques used.  My classmates seemed mostly color focused as well.  And some were just class junkies.  I could be that way, given the opportunity.

So now that I have tried the basics, I'll be experimenting some more.  I'm excited to open up Lisa's Color Me This sample kit that I got on her Etsy site, MetalMeThis and try hers now.  Her colors are always lovely. And Lisa posted a comment that clarified that her colorants are not inks, but patinas.  Oh this is good news- I won't need a heat gun or have as much hassle with this brand.  Looking forward to trying them very soon!  

I'll post what I make in the near future.  But in the meanwhile, how about if you post comments about what you've done with alcohol inks or  Lisa's patinas and how you like to use them?  Thanks!