Hand Sanitizer & AI's

Not sure if you're like me or not but every once in a while odd things show up in my craft area.  Sometimes if I think hard enough I'll figure out how it got there...other times it's just a mystery.  Well, today I was clearing off my desk and I found a small bottle of hand sanitizer.  At first I was like?!?!?   But then I thought about it and realized that after we recently sold one vehicle and bought a different one I was going to switch my "essentials" from one to the other.  Well for some reason this bottle ended up in my room...I suppose I was going to take it to the truck when I was asked to get/do something in my room. 

Anyway, I thought since it was there it might be fun to mess around a bit with it to see what I could do.  I figured since hand sanitizer had lots of alcohol in it like Alcohol Inks it might be a fun place to start!

So, I pulled out a bit of glossy cardstock, my AI's and the sanitizer and set about playing!

First I smeared a dollop of the sanitizer over the cardstock....  A nice thick coat ~

Added a few drops of AI....

And set about mixing it with my finger!

 

Here's how it turned out....

 

Now this was so much fun, I couldn't just stop with one.....

 

 

 

 

The interesting pattern on this one was created by letting it partially dry then using the heat tool to quickly evaporate the rest of the sanitizer. 

 

NOTE: Heat tool & Hand Sanitizer is not a good mix!!!  The fumes were pretty nasty so I would advise against it even though it does make neat patterns.  If you do give it a try be sure to do so in a well ventilated area.  Otherwise you'll end up with one heck of a head ache!

 

 

 

 

 

Some things I discovered...

 

Papers make a difference ~ the light colored example in the right hand corner above was made on regular plain old cardstock.  The colors move but aren't as intense as on the glossy cardstock.  I guess that's because the sanitizer soaks into the paper fairly quick pulling the colors in along with it.

 

If you vary the amount of gel you can achieve a deceptive amount of depth.  I noticed in areas where the sanitizer was a thinner coat the color seemed intense while the areas that were thicker created layers of color that you could actually see when dry.  (check out the green/yellow piece and the blue triangle above). 

 

Using one color creates a variety of hues while multiple colors can be seen in layers depending on the amount of mixing.

 

All in all this is a really fun medium to play with. 

Just remember NOT to heat it...

Bad news!

 

Tomorrow time permitting I'll share a few cards I am making with this technique.

Till then, have fun playing!