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I have been using alcohol inks on my scrapbook pages and projects for a couple of years now, however I have never tried Jacquard's Pinata Colors, so I was very excited about this review. Alcohol inks are really fun to work with and the Pinata Colors can be used on a variety of surfaces like glass, paper, leather, foil, metal, plastic, fabric, wood, acetate, vellum, clays, and more! By using different techniques, you can easily create a variety of cool effects on all your layouts, projects, and even specific embellishments. I received the Jacquard Pinata Exciter Pack for this review. It came with 6 vibrant colors: Sunlight Yellow, Calabaza Orange, Chili Pepper Red, Sapphire Blue, Lime Green, Burro Brown, and Blanco Blanco, which is a bright white. The kit also included a bottle of Claro Extender and Clean Up Solution. All of the bottles were one half ounce, and came with easy twist off lids. The alcohol inks can be used on almost any surface, are transparent, permanent, acid-free, can be diluted with the Pinata Claro Extender, and clean up easily with the Pinata Clean Up Solution. The Claro Extender was a favorite of mine and can be used to decrease the intensity of a color and increase transparency. The Clean Up Solution makes it easy to clean the Pinata inks off surfaces and also contains moisturizers to keep brushes soft and pliable. I found this out first hand when I decided to ink the edge of my green button on my first layout, then decided I wanted to clean it off and keep it plain. To begin my review, I created a color chart using all of the inks. The top row are the true ink colors, and then the rest are where I have mixed them with the others to create new color combos. The bottom row is where I added small drops of the Blanco Blanco ink in the middle of each color. This provided a great color chart to refer to while making my projects.
For my first layout, I used felt to apply the Sapphire Blue, Lime Green, and then a mixture of both with the Claro Extender, on a 12" x 12" sheet of glossy cardstock. I also inked the edge of the black cardstock, sheer embellishment, and heart with the Blanco Blanco. I loved how this created a sanded, distressed paint like effect to my products. I also applied the Lime Green and Sapphire Blue ink to the fabric flower.
Title: One & Only To create my second layout, I applied the Chili Pepper Red ink and a small amount of the Claro Extender all over a 12" x 12" sheet of glossy cardstock. Then I applied small drops of the Claro Extender all over the page which created the lighter circles you see. I also added small drops of the Blanco Blanco ink to the center of several of the lightened circles. Using a felt tip applicator and occasionally my fingers, I used the inks to color clear buttons, the edge of my cardstock, the felt scallop embellishment, and also to color the black/white die cut arrow.
Title: Know This... I used the Lime Green and Calabaza Orange inks to dye pearl polyclay for my third project. I applied the inks to the clay, and then ran them through a pasta machine several times. This resulted in my own unique peach and minty clay colors. I rolled the clay over a butterfly stamp, and added a little metallic paint to create the main charm. Then I baked the other clay pieces in the tin lids and decorated them with glitter glue, and paints.
Title: Butterfly Tin I had a wonderful time creating with these beautiful Pinata Ink colors. They were easy to use, provided a variety of ways for me to alter the look of my scrapbook supplies, and were super easy to clean up. They dry almost instantly, yet allow you to come back at any point and add more if you decide you would like to change the overall look. I tried them on a variety of surfaces and was pleased with the results on all and how vibrant the colors remained. I would recommend the Jacquard Pinata colors to all crafters and if you have never used alcohol inks, I encourage you to give them a try!
Inks are one of my all-time favorite mediums to work with when crafting. They are so versatile and bring color to everything! Alcohol inks are unlike many other types of inks in that they do not come on a felt or foam pad, but in a bottle like a reinker for a dye or pigment ink pad. The Pinata Color Exciter Pack that arrived for the review was exactly that, exciting! There were 7 colors, an extender liquid and clean-up solution in the package with a full-colored insert explaining the uses of the inks with lots of tips. This sheet was very valuable when working with the inks since they are different from other alcohol inks available on the market today. Each one half ounce bottle has a dropper style top, much like an eye dropper. A label encircles the bottle showing the name and color of the ink inside. The bottle touts the claims of the ink - for any surface, indelible in water, transparent, permanent and acid free. What the label doesn't mention is the brilliant intensity of the inks. I don't believe that I have ever seen such vivid color in an ink that doesn't change once it is applied to a surface. I have to say that I was blown away by the colors, no matter which one I used! With our clay emphasis in December, I was anxious to use the alcohol inks with the clay since the Exciter Pack had some beautiful clay projects shown on the packaging. I tried the alcohol ink a couple different ways with the clay, before and after baking. Please visit the Jacquard ScrapFriends Gallery for other projects not shown in this review. There is an Altered Note Cube that has a white clay top that was inked after baking. The white clay maintains the brilliant purple color since the surface turns non-porous after baking. The Pinata ink is easy to apply by using a brush or foam pad. Looking at the ornament below, Lime Green alcohol ink was mixed into transparent clay to make the spiral jelly roll pieces along the outer edge of the frame. The tinted clay was combined with pearlescent clay for a little contrast in the jelly roll itself. There were only about 8-10 drops of the green ink added to the clay to give it that beautiful lime tint. After baking, the central image was stamped on the glass with permanent ink then colored with alcohol inks. The Pinata inks are fluid, but also paintable! It is incredible to paint with these colors! Since the image was stamped on the front, the back side of the glass held the paint for a more dimensional effect. The red and green inks are very transparent, but the white is more opaque. This is a great feature since adding it to another brighter color would tone it down into the pastel range. I just love the versatility of that feature.
Title: Coal Again? Ornament A favorite use of alcohol inks is to blend 2-3 colors together and use it as a background for a card or scrapbook page. The center part of this card that the greeting is stamped on, has 3 colors blended together to create a polished stone look. The Claro Extender was added to help move the inks around a bit after the initial application. I sprayed some isopropyl alcohol onto the paper at the end which also spread or veined the ink even more and gave it a matte finish.
Title: Holiday Greetings Card Working with these inks on projects this month revitalized my love of alcohol inks! The Pinata inks offer the qualities of the alcohol inks (fast drying time, excellent blending characteristics, great colors) and high quality art coloring products (saturated vivid color, moisture resistant and multiple surface application) in one fantastic product. I absolutely love the fact that you can apply the Pinata inks with a spray, brush, foam or directly from the bottle. The colors are so outrageous that I just love looking at them when dispensed from the bottles! The Claro Extender and Clean-Up Solution offer 2 characteristics to the inks upon demand - a great option to any artist. If you have ever worked with alcohol inks, you'll fall in love with the Pinata inks too! If you haven't enjoyed alcohol inks before, don't hesitate to start with an Exciter Pack. It will give you everything you need to get started and more. Visit the Jacquard web site by clicking on the logo below for even more projects beyond this review. Enjoy!
I use a lot of different inks on my paper crafts and altered projects and I’m always happy when I can try out something new to me. The Pinata Colors from Jacquard are a product that I have not used before and I was very happy to learn that I would have the chance to play with them. The Exciter Pack that I received has 7 basic colors, a bottle of Claro Extender and a bottle of Clean-Up Solution. Let the fun begin!! The Pinata colors are color-saturated intense colors which are transparent when dry. They are alcohol based but have a longer drying time than other brands of alcohol inks that I have used, which gives them greater versatility. The set comes with an extender which further lengthens the drying time and facilitates blending of colors to form even more vibrant shades and hues. These can be successfully used on almost any clean surface. They dry quickly, will not fade and are moisture-resistant when dry. For my first project, a nitelite shade, I wanted to test the Pinata inks on clay and to see just how transparent they are. Jacquard’s website is full of helpful hints and illustrated project instructions for all of their products and I encourage you to check it out. I created a shade cover following the instructions for a project by Marie Segal. Once my clay shade had been baked, I applied Pinata inks and stamped a design on the surface using a metallic pigment ink. Then, according to the project instructions, I baked the shade one more time. This second baking was a little fume-y and I don’t recommend doing much of this in your regular cooking oven. Once completed and plugged in, this shade glows in the dark, casting a gorgeous light in my guest bathroom. So, yes, the inks ARE transparent and yes, they work perfectly on clay, as promised!
NiteLite I have been in Christmas-ornament making mode for the past couple of weeks. I really like working with the plain glass ornaments and decided to see how the Pinata colors would work inside one. I dripped a few drops of Chili Pepper into the ornament and swirled it around. Then I added some drops of Blanco Blanco and swirled them around. Finally I added a couple drops of the Claro Extender which allowed the colors to blend beautifully. A sprinkle of Pearl Ex Aztec Gold shaken around on the inside gave the ornament a little bit of shimmery elegance. These Pinata colors are beautifully intense colors which blend extremely well. All this ornament needed to finish it off was a paisley rub-on and some ribbon.
Glass Ornament For my third project I created several small tiles by stamping into translucent clay and then painting the baked tiles using the Pinata Colors. After the paint dried, I brushed the tiles with Aztec Gold Pearl Ex pigment powder and sealed them with a satin glaze. To create the background paper for this card, I painted my rubber stamp with the Pinata Colors and quickly stamped onto coated cardstock before the inks dried. I really like the “imperfect” look that you can achieve when stamping with these colors.
Tile card These Pinata Colors are a most-welcome addition to my crafting supplies. The colors are truly saturated so that even though they are transparent when dry, the color remains vivid. The extended drying time makes them very versatile for blending colors, stamping and other applications where you need a little extra time. Jacquard supports all of their products with an outstanding website full of helpful tips and great projects with illustrated step-by-step instructions and I certainly encourage you to check it out!
One of the most amazing products in the stamping/scrapping industry is alcohol inks. These handy dandy inks have a multitude of applications and can be used over and over again on many different projects, without using the same application twice. Among the premiere brands of alcohol inks are those produced by Jacquard. These inks are alcohol based, with transparent colors made for use on porous and non-porous surfaces such as glass, plastic, metal and leather. For this review, I received the exciter pack starter set of Piñata colors. This pack includes seven ink colors, including Sunbright Yellow, Calabaza Orange, Chili Pepper Red, Sapphire Blue, Lime Green, Burro Brown and Blanco. The Blanco can be used to create pastel versions of the other colors. I also received a bottle of Claro Extender which is used to extend the working and drying time of the inks as well as for certain texture techniques such as creating marble or stone-like textures by dropping small drops of the claro extender on dried inks. In addition, a bottle of Clean Up solution was also included. This product is used to clean and moisturize brushes used in your alcohol ink projects.. When I opened my package of Piñata Colors, I was immediately struck by the vibrant, bright colors of the alcohol inks. Both the Lime Green and Sapphire Blue inks immediately became favorites of mine as they blended so well together. The other colors were beautiful as well and I was excited to try them on my projects. Having recently viewed the PageSage DVD entitled Millefiori Story where Judy Belcher demonstrated using alcohol inks to color transparent clays in such a way as they retained their transparent look, I decided to try this technique first. I conditioned and rolled out three thin sheets of transparent clay using my pasta machine. I then applied a fairly heavy coating of Lime Green, Sapphire Blue and Burro Brown alcohol ink to each sheet. I then folded the sheets on themselves, much like you would when creating a skinner blend. This resulted in a transparent, striated color of clay in the particular color of ink used. I took my thin clay sheets and covered chipboard shapes to create a flower accent for my “Hi!“ card.
Title: Detail of Inked Clay
Title: Hi Card For my second project, I used the inks in a more traditional way. I decided to tint a metal embellishment to match my patterned paper. I took three colors of ink (Chili Pepper Red, accented by Sunbright Yellow and Calabaza Orange) to create a marbled effect on my accent. At one point, I had too much red in one area of the accent. I used the other ink colors to remove a small amount of dried ink from that spot and blended in several drops of the other two colors. My accent now blends with the marbled patterned paper of my card.
Title: Love Card Alcohol Inks are a fun, easy way to give some pop to your scrapbook accents, among other things. The Jacquard Piñata Colors Exciter Pack is a great collection to have. The colors are those that are easily worked into any color palette. By using the Blanco ink, one can easily create a pastel of any version of the inks without losing the transparency of the ink. Adding polymer clay into the mix adds a whole new dimension to the use of these inks. If you are looking for a new way to jazz up your projects, definitely consider the Jacquard Piñata Color Exciter Pack.
Alcohol Ink is a coloring option for papercrafting that really goes where a lot of other colorants won't. Since these inks are alcohol-based, they can be used on both porous and non-porous surfaces (such as glass or glazed tile), and their transparency lends them a unique look that can't be replicated with acrylic paints. Alcohol inks can be baked right into heat-curing clays (if allowed to dry completely first) or used to color them afterwards. Jacquard, a leading manufacturer of coloring mediums such as paints, inks and dyes, offers its own line of alcohol inks. This Susan Pickering Rothamel signature line is known as Piñata, available in seventeen colors. I received for review the Piñata Colors Exciter Pack, a nine-bottle set marketed to include a starter kit of six vibrant colors, one bottle of white, and a bottle each of Claro Extender and Clean-Up solutions. (My set appears to have been mispackaged with two bottles of extender and no clean-up solution.) The packaging includes a number of suggestions for use and application of the inks, along with a number of illustrative images. More ideas and project instructions are available at Jacquard's website, www.jacquardproducts.com . Though transparent, Piñata colors are highly saturated - a little color goes a long way! - and have a slightly longer drying time than some other alcohol inks I've worked with. Probably my favorite use for alcohol inks is coloring non-porous scrapbooking embellishments such as acrylic pieces and Zsiage scrapbook film, so the first thing I did was pull out some film letters to see how the Piñata colors would fare. I usually rely on dropping the ink onto the film and allowing it to spread, or applying it with felt for a similar marbled look, but since the Piñata colors are a little thicker I decided to try placing a few drops of ink on the pieces and spreading them out with a foam brush. Just right! I then pulled out a light-colored sheet of Prism's metallic cardstock and tried the 'droplet' method, letting different colors mix. For one portion I used Sunshine Yellow and Chile Pepper, and for another I tried Sapphire blue and Blanco. For the latter I also added a little of the Extender Solution. This clear liquid is added in a small portion to any of the inks to slow down the drying time. Doing this makes brush-painting or detail work possible. In this case, adding the extender thinned out the supersaturated blue and gave more of a variety in shades to the final paper. Once dry, I used a paper punch to create the shapes on this card. The ink went all the way through the paper in spots and looked pretty even on the back, so for some of the blue stars I used pattern on the front of the paper, and for some, that on the reverse.
Mazel Tov Card A more recent technique I've begun to use alcohol inks for is tinting white or translucent polymer clay to allow me to create just the shade or blend of shades I like. As long as the ink is allowed to dry completely, it is safe to cure alcohol ink-tinted pieces in the oven. I tried using Piñata inks with two different brands of polymer clay. Each time I mixed a bright color with some white to get beautiful pastel shades that I haven't seen available straight out of a bottle anywhere. The colors seem to lose a little of their 'pastel' quality in the curing, and come out a little more fluorescent in tone. But the effect the tinted clays give when light shines through is beautiful, and wouldn't be possible with an opaque colorant such as paint.
Mosaic Votive Holder The Pinata Colors Exciter Pack retails for about $25.00 and the colors and solutions are also sold individually for about $3.50 apiece, though many online discounters offer them for less. I wouldn't want to be caught without a selection of alcohol inks in my crafting arsenal, and Jacquard's colors are a fine and versatile choice to have on hand. See the ScrapFriends Jacquard Gallery!
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