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• Jacquard, the manufacturer of these popular alcohol inks, chooses to use more lightfast dyes for alcohol inks than their competitors. The reason for this is for longer lasting artworks and achieve more vibrant colours.
• Piñata can be used on YUPO®, foil, wood, en caustic, glass, metal, plastic, vinyl, leather, polymer clay, Clay-board, fiberglass stone, ceramic, with epoxy resins, paper & more.
• Piñata is waterproof and permanent but can be re-wet for further manipulation at any time with alcohol. On non-porous surfaces, they can be totally removed using Jacquard’s Clean Up Solution.
• On YUPO® the inks move more freely and tend to bleed quite a lot, blending nicely with each other.
• Piñata Alcohol Inks are excellent for use in epoxy resins. Blanco Blanco (white) is the key to using alcohol inks in resins. The other Pinata alcohol ink colours simply float in resin and do not sink down into the mould. Blanco Blanco is the only color that sinks, and pushes the other colours down with it. This makes it indispensable for creating the fabulous “petrified rainbow” effects.
All the standard colours are dye-based and totally transparent.
• Blanco Blanco and the Pinata Metallics are pigment-based and are highly opaque.
• The metallic colors are made with real metal pigments, which is why they look like metal leaf. These pigments cannot be used in water-based media because they will oxidize, but they are very stable in alcohol and resin.
• Pearl (036) is made with a Pearl Ex mica pigment and performs slightly different than the other metallic colours. It tends to sink underneath the ink instead of laying on the top surface and will therefore add a pearlescent effect to any colour.
• Basic Dyes are the same type of dyes used in the alcohol inks. Basic Dye powder can be added to Claro Extender to make new custom colors, and specks of dye can be sprinkled on surfaces and then “activated” with the addition of alcohol or Claro Extender. Disclaimer: Many of the Basic Dyes are not as lightfast as the dyes in Piñata.
• It is ok to use alcohol inks with acrylics, but the acrylic should be applied first and then the alcohol ink should be added. If you paint acrylic over the alcohol inks, they often stay tacky and don’t fully dry.
Washi tape is nice to use to get crisp lines if you want to mask. Masking fluid can also be used for cool masking effects. This works best on non-porous surfaces rather than paper.
• There are different ways to dispense the ink. Many people like to drip the ink straight from the bottles onto the surface and manipulate them once down, which is a great place to start. Watching how the different colours interact and blend is visually pleasing.
• Piñata Inks can be pushed around by blowing through a straw and tilting the surface to encourage blending. In addition, they can be put into empty pens (alcohol ink applicator pens) or sprayed through airbrushes.
• If you apply the ink in heavy coats or pools, the finish is glossier. If you allow thin layers to dry, they will appear more matte. You can also get a more matte appearance from the inks by diluting them with Pinata Clean Up Solution. Wetting the surface with Clean Up Solution will give a washy watercolour appearance to alcohol ink painting. Apply it to a dry surface and you can better see the discreet drops that were applied.
• Diluting with Pinata Claro Extender keeps the finish glossier.
• Spritzing, flicking, or dropping alcohol adds lighter coloured circles and splashes. It will also re-wet the colors and blend them more. This is especially nice when used on the darker colours like Sapphire Blue, Rainforest Green, and Passion Purple to bring out some of the lighter tones. It is very much like dropping water on a watercolor painting. Many water colour principles apply to alcohol inks if you think about them as alcohol-based water colours.
• It is recommended you don’t let alcohol ink decorated polymer clay sit overnight before baking. The inks can settle into unbaked clay giving them a faded patchy look.
• Jacquard’s Piñata Alcohol Inks are ethanol-based rather than isopropyl alcohol-based, whereas other alcohol ink brands use isopropyl alcohol. That is why Jacquard’s Piñata inks are more concentrated and considered the “artist grade” alcohol inks. If, instead of Clean Up Solution you want to use Ethyl alcohol, you can, but should realize that Clean Up Solution will actually clean the inks up more thoroughly. It can coagulate in 70% isopropyl. It does not do this in Clean Up Solution or Ethanol.
• The best sealer is epoxy resin. It not only covers alcohol inks without smearing or bleeding, but it is also a great protective layer to make sure the inks cannot be scratched or scuffed.
Thank you to Jacquard for this information.
Shop the range of Pinata Alcohol Inks, Clean Up Solution and Extender and associated accessories here……