Crackly Goodness in a Snap! - mini tutorial

I am always experimenting with various ways to work with alcohol inks and also creating crackle effects, so I was intrigued with Barb Fajardo's "Crackly Goodness on Polymer Clay" lesson at CraftArtEdu as it combines both.

I really enjoyed the lesson and picked up a few tips but I find the inks to be super messy and so unpredictable!  I know some "clayers" love the unpredictable part and at times I do to!  But there are times when we make a piece and then someone contacts us and says "how much they love those colors and can we make another one for them".  Working with regular polymer clay colors that is not an issue as we record all our clay color recipes, including combinations and blends.  But when it comes to inks, however, that can be a big problem.  This is an example of 3 scarf jewelry pieces we made using the same 3 ink colors and how each one came out slightly different.  Since we realized this is what happens, we make sure we color the beads the same time as the scarf bail so they match.

Also, working with alcohol inks can be extremely messy!  I purchased the Tim Holtz Ink Palette sometime ago and love it but you can see how the colors were starting to get all over the place.

Then I discovered a new method that is so much cleaner and works incredibly well!  Tim Holtz shows how you can fill a water brush with the Alcohol Blending Solution and using it to paint with.  The cool thing is that the brush is pretty much self-cleaning when you are switch colors!  You can see the entire lesson here.  Even though it is for making cards, the ink painting in steps 1 to 4 are all you need to follow.

I could hardly wait to try this but had to wait until I could track down one of those cool brushes.

My first attempt with this method was to make some "snaps" using Barb Fajardo's Crackly Goodness technique.  I was pleasantly surprised as to how much fun it was and easier to clean the brush (wipe on paper towel) between colors!

Some of the snaps I used silver (I can't say anymore or I would give part of the tutorial away) to match the silver colored bezel on the snap and I tried one (the flower) with black which was quite cool and gave such a different effect.