bottles I got from Amazon<\/a>\u00a0were a bit inconsistent. They’re like caulking cartridges, where you cut more or less off the tip to determine the size of the opening.<\/p>\nThe top of the air space was in different places and it was difficult to try to work around that by cutting just short of that space and\u00a0then puncture them with a needle (so drops would all be the same size).<\/p>\n
It isn’t a rant about meticulous manufacturing, but if you cut slightly too low, which is tough to judge, it can get messy.<\/p>\n
Some of the caps were also\u00a0be leaky. I put some masking tape around the threads inside the cap to make it a bit more snug, like using plumber’s tape with pipes.<\/p>\n
Gloves<\/strong>\u00a0– definitely wear them, but you won’t make as much of a mess or need them quite so badly if you use…<\/p>\nTweezers<\/strong>\u00a0– I happen to have a pair of tweezers with a long bent tip. They may have come from a batch of old dental tools I recycled\u00a0for printmaking years ago. They made this job so much cleaner.<\/p>\nI used them to separate the inner filter from the colored plastic piece that holds the nib and to hold the filter steady while I cut it in half to fit\u00a0in the jar of alcohol.<\/p>\n
Needle-nose pliers<\/strong> – between the tweezers and these, my hands barely came in contact with the Sharpies.<\/p>\nI pulled the nib (very easy) and the colored piece of plastic the nib\u00a0sits in (not so easy) out with them. That plastic piece can stick and need some\u00a0coaxing. A firm grip with the pliers, the gray tube in your other hand and maybe some twisting\/tugging should do the\u00a0job.<\/p>\n
![\"alcohol](\"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/alcoholink_markercaps_crop-400x271.jpg\")
Markers<\/strong> – the ones\u00a0I used, even though they were from the same set as in the videos, didn’t have color names written on the body or packaging.<\/p>\nI kept the caps and wrote a name that I made up (in Sharpie, of course)\u00a0on each one, heavily influenced by childhood crayon names. I matched this to the color chart I made for the inks, so that if I ran out of a color that I loved, I could take the cap to a\u00a0store and hopefully find it again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Color Chart<\/h3>\n
![\"alcohol](\"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/alcoholink_colorchart.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
I made this for reference, since looking at the bottle doesn’t give you a whole lot of help – all the purples look the same, for example.<\/p>\n
Next Stop<\/h3>\n
The plan is to make test pieces from polymer clay, so I can judge how the color in\u00a0the ink bottle or what I see on the chart changes as it’s mixed with the clay then baked.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It all started with a love of sea glass, and all things\u00a0“frosted” looking. On\u00a0Pinterest, I came across translucent polymer clay being used to mimic it.\u00a0Katrin Neumaier’s jewelry\u00a0caught my eye\u00a0again\u00a0and again. Her work takes my breath away. After researching this (and wandering off the beaten path a bit), I found that the clay can be colored …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,7,4],"tags":[29,25,26,30,32,33,34,31],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-do-it-yourself","category-polymer-clay","category-tutorials","tag-alcohol-ink","tag-art-supplies","tag-craft-supplies","tag-diy","tag-katrin-neumaier","tag-polymer-clay","tag-sea-glass","tag-sharpies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"DIY](\"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/alcholinks.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"DIY](\"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/alcoholink_supplies_crop-281x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"alcohol](\"https:\/\/www.chirphopstudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/alcoholink_bottle_crop-200x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n