We’re so lucky to have our January Guest designer, Michelle Clement join us by demoing how she the maya road chipboard with walnut ink in her gallery. Make sure you also check out Michelle’s blog as she’ll be giving some more examples of how to use walnut ink all through February.

From the Kenner Road kit:
- Maya Road, birds with cages chipboard

You will also need:
- paper towel
- walnut ink crystals
- warm water
- empty container
- stir stick/popsicle stick
- naked chipboard

Optional:
- tweezers
- acrylic paint (white)
- X-Acto knife
- paintbrush

Step One: Gather your supplies and spread a few layers of folded paper towel under your empty container (make sure your container is big enough to hold the chipboard pieces you want to dye when they’re laid flat in it). Sprinkle a small amount of dry walnut crystals into the empty container and add a little bit of warm water to them to make the ink solution. Stir the warm water and crystals together using the stir/popsicle stick until there are no lumps and all of the crystals have dissolved.

(You can add more crystals or more water to the container if you think your mix is too weak/too dark, respectively – it takes some troubleshooting to test the’ strength’ of your walnut ink mix. You can test it by splashing a dot of it on white paper and letting it dry for a few minutes to see how dark it turns out. And to dye a few pieces of chipboard, you only need enough water to cover up your chipboard pieces completely once they’re fully submerged, but I like to mix a bigger batch and just put the lid on and keep it for next time).

Step Two: Take your ‘naked’ chipboard pieces and submerge them, laying flat, in the walnut ink solution (they like to float at first, so just push them down until they’re completely covered by the ink). Let them soak for around 10 minutes, or longer – depending on the size of them and how dark you want the final color (the longer you let them soak, the darker they will turn out once dry).

Step Three: Using your fingers (or tweezers, if you want your fingers to stay clean), pull out the thoroughly soaked chipboard pieces from the walnut ink solution and lay them to rest on a few folded paper towels. They will look evenly dyed, at this point, but the edges have really been soaked for longer – whichever side you leave facing up will be dry the darkest and have a gradient that’s darker at the edge, the underside will stay fairly light and evenly colored, so keep this in mind when placing them to dry.

(Optional) Before you lay the pieces down to dry, you can also distress the chipboard pieces while they’re still wet – you can use the sharp edge of an X-Acto knife to rough up the edges, peel or roll up the layers on the edge of the shape, or even bend or fold them to create creases before flattening them in the position you’d like them to dry in. Whatever you do will stay as the pieces dry, and they’re pliable enough to do alot to, at this point!

Step Four: Let the pieces dry on the paper towels for a few hours (if they’re fairly small), or longer for larger pieces – I like to leave mine overnight, if time allows it. (You can also flip them upside-down in the middle of the drying time to evenly distribute the ink to both dies (this makes them more evenly dyed, instead of having a dark top and lighter bottom). And voila! You’ve got some lovely, dark, dyed walnut ink chipboard pieces to put on your page!

Additional/Optional Step - Make the edges pop!

Occasionally, I end up forgetting about pieces that are soaking, or mixing a too-dark solution, and accidentally dye my pieces a little too dark for the placement I originally had in mind on my scrapbook page – this simple solution, and a little paint, will help them pop right back out of a page: simply dip a flat brush in white paint (or a similar light-colored paint), and hold the dry chipboard piece between two fingers. Paint the edges of the piece with the flat edge of the brush lightly, turning it in your fingers as you go to cover all edges, and let it dry. This little step lightens the whole piece up just enough!

Thanks so much for joining us Michelle! it was such a pleasure to have you as one of the team this month!
xo

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 6:00 am by kl and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.