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Imagine Crafts distribute craft products across the USA and when I was approach to review some of their products, I was very excited.

At first, I did not know what to make of these 7 little ink bottles – what was I going to DO with them? I had seen Donna Downey use inks in her art journal layouts, so that was a starting point, but when I realised that the Fantastix, which I also had a packet of, were made to go with the inks (says so on the bottle – note to self: always read the labels!!) a bunch of ideas jumpers out at me!

These All-purpose inks actually come in a range of colors, which you can see over on the Tsukineko website

First things first, I needed to test the colors, so out came my handy art journal

The inks are quick drying on the art journal pages and didn’t run.  The white ink is opaque on the place paper when applied thickly.

The Fantastix applicators are perfect for using with the inks; it almost turns them into pens and allows me to control the application of the inks easily.

“Life” Art Journal Layout

The art journal spread already had a bright background of reds and yellows, so it was a good fit for those colours

I used the 92 Red Delicious ink to draw circles straight onto the water coloured paper

I used the 11 Lemon Yellow to add more circles

Looking good so far – the circles on the left hand side and the bar across the right were torn from Gelli printed papers and then highlighted with charcoal pencil

Then I added some 80 White ink

I was trying to go for the Donna Downey ink spatter here but the Fantastix isn’t the tool for that, so I added some random white dots. Some of the ink dots were thick and needed to be left overnight to dry completely.

I finished the page with rub-ons, painted chipboard keyhole and flowers and lettering. The “live” text was written in with charcoal pencil. The “life” lettering was done with the technique shown in the “Create” art journal layout instructions

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“Engagement” Art Journal Layout

This art journal page also began with some acrylic paints added into a water-colour paper art journal.

Here I decided to use the 60 Celadon, a dark green and wanted to apply it with a spray bottle

So I filled the spray bottle with some water

and added some green ink.

This was WAY too watery – You don’t need to dilute think ink when using it with a spray bottle *learning an important lesson* so I tipped the diluted solution out and just added the green ink. I sprayed the ink over sequence scrap, of varying sizes

I also removed the pump from the spray bottle and dripping bits off the end of the tube.

I finished off this art journal layout with matching gelli print paper and wrote the quote (from Marie Forleo) with a paint marker.

I used the white and yellow inks to highlight some of the stamped shapes

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Gelli Prints and Ink Stencilling

To add a third layer to these gelli plate prints, I added the 98 Vintage Wine ink into another spray bottle (undiluted) and used my Cosmic Swirl stencil, by The Crafters Workshop, to add to create a pattern with the ink.

I really liked how these pages came out!

What I liked about the products:

Especially when used with the Fantastix these inks re a great way to add another element of colour and design to our mixed media artwork. The fantastic come with individual lids and while they have dried to from their initial ink application, they are still pliable and more ink can easily be re-applied for subsequent use.

What I didn’t like about the products:

Initially I thought the colour pallette was limited but have found our since that these All-Purpose inks are available in many other colours

For more information:
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Disclosure: These products have been provided by ImagineCrafts for the purpose of review. All opinions are that of the MixedMediaArt team. The links on this page are affiliate links and any purchases help to support the ongoing work by MixedMediaArt.

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