I have been getting exasperated with my yupo paper and alcohol inks last week.  Sometimes the ink would drop into circular blobs and spread really well but other times I would just get a blob that didn’t spread at all.  I see I will have to experiment a bit more.  Sometimes I would get a blob that spread in the centre of the paper but if I used the same ink towards the edge then it wouldn’t spread.  I was very careful not to touch the edges with my fingers as I know that can prevent the ink spreading.  I tried using the reverse side of the yupo but that wasn’t great.  This photo isn’t great – the birthday card is much brighter in real life.  It was good fun though.

With this card I was trying to capture the likeness of an Opal.  I had found an image of an Opal on the internet then wondered how to go about painting something similar.  I used alcohol inks on one side of an overhead projection film and drew the lines on the other side using acrylic inks and a dip pen.  The original acetate painting is A4 in size, I scanned it and printed another piece of acetate (inkjet) and cut out the bit I liked the best for the card.

Inks: various alcohol inks and acrylic inks with pearl and copper mixatives, a few dots of colour from Copic pens in places

Card:  white, black, acetate (overhead projection and inkjet printable)