You'll LOVE this! String art with Oxide Inks

At Messy Mondays this week, we were playing with string art using acrylic paints. I was in my studio today and thinking how much I like the string art technique, but I don't like all the mess of the acrylic paints.

SO ... I decided to try the technique with Oxide inks - thinking they'd be cleaner and smoother.

My initial idea (to save the mess of the paints) was to simply "smudge" the oxide ink pad over the string, and then use that as what I might call a "dry pull." I placed the string on my craft mat, held one end down, and then pulled the ink pad over the string.

As you can see (sort of) to the left, the colours are quite vibrant and distinct (I used Fossilized Amber, Seedless Preserves, and Mermaid Lagoon).

But, I thought it was a bit too faint.

So, rather than "give up," I spritzed some water on the leftover ink on my craft mat and created the images in the first photo at the top of this post.

The step-by-step instructions are here so you can recreate this amazing look. The oxide inks give that "chalky" look that really stands out with this technique. (I am presenting this based on the notion that you already know the string art basic technique. For those of you who don't know the technique, I will post another tutorial on that in the next few days.)

Step 1: "Smudge" some oxide inks onto your craft mat or working surface and then spritz lightly with water.

Step 2: Pull and wiggle the string through the ink. The more overlap in colours that you want, the more you can let the string flow between the ink blotches. If you don't want that gradient, then be careful to not let the inked string touch the other colour(s).

Step 3: Lay the string onto your finished surface (I used regular cardstock here), using this "wobbly" type of design. Place another piece of paper or cardstock on top of the image, and then place a small magazine or light book on top and pull the string through, using the regular string art technique.

TIP: I suggest using a "good" piece of paper on top, rather than scrap, because you will likely LOVE the image that results from that pull, too and you'd hate to waste it onto a scrap piece of paper that you can't re-use!

Finished Result: I did all three of these images on the same piece of cardstock, using the a single set of ink smudges (I didn't re-ink the mat for each one).

So, though this technique is not quite as "clean" as I had hoped, the images are well worth the tiny mess (and there's no paint brush required!). And, there's an added bonus!

After I had picked up and pulled the three images I wanted, there was still some ink on my craft mat. So, not wanting to waste that, I grabbed some scraps of watercolour cardstock and swiped them through the ink (being careful not to create "mud" by allowing the ink to dry slightly between "dips").

Here are my finished pieces, ready to be used for die cuts, card backgrounds, or journal pages! Woohoo! How cool is that???