 |
|
|
| Sharpie Tips A Sharpie is an alcohol-based permanent felt tip marker manufactured by the Sanford Company. They have commonly been available in various tip sizes in the standard black, blue, green and red colours. Sanford has released some wonderful new colours as well as metallics. They are available in fine point, ultra fine point and dual tips (i.e: fine on one end and ultra fine on the other end) and sold as singles or two-,four-, six-, eight- and 12-packs in stores like Target and various office-supply stores. UK artists - ask your Staples office supply store for Sharpies. They are now available under the Paper Mate label but are still called Sharpies! |
Colouring Tips I've had the most success with stamping my images with coal-black Ancient Page ink and heat-setting it with an embossing (heat) tool. I have also tried StazOn ink pads by Tsukineko with the same results. I found that with both inks, even though the image has been heat-set, the Sharpies will still smear the stamped image which will result in your colouring looking dirty if you just colour over the stamped image. You literally have to colour between the lines! Always have a piece of scrap paper next to your domino while working. Every time you apply one stroke of colour to the domino, immediately draw a line on the scrap paper to remove any of the black dye ink the point may have picked up from the stamped image. If you don't have the ultra-fine-point markers, you can still use the fine-point markers for colouring the smallest details. Simply touch the tip of the marker to the domino surface and fill in the area with little dabs of colour. The key to getting a light shade is just a light touch or one stroke of the tip of the marker. The more you go over an area, the more intense the colour will become. Blending and shading with Sharpies is very easy. You can shade wonderfully by applying the darkest colour and then working outwards from dark to light. For example, the background on my 'Alice' necklace: I started colouring the background with a red Sharpie and then changed to orange. I coloured over a portion of the red, achieving a darker shade of orange. Working away from the red area, the orange gradually lightened. The marker cleans its self as you move farther away from the darkest area. Once the marker is colouring with its true colour, switch to yellow and do the same again, always working from dark to light until you finish with true shade of the yellow Sharpie. You can also shade an area by alternating colours. To achieve a golden look for the hair, I don't just colour the whole area. I actually colour one strand of hair at a time. I randomly apply the odd line of orange in the hair and then colour over it and spread the orange around with the yellow Sharpie. You can also scribble an area of orange onto a piece of glossy cardstock as a palette and then, even though the orange dries, as you rub the yellow marker over the orange it rejuvenates it and picks up the colour. Continue colouring one strand of hair at a time. If you know the point didn't touch any black ink, colour the next strand so the shading varies. Then clean the tip on the scrap paper, scribble it again in the orange, and continue. Fixing mistakes and cleaning up dirty or muddy areas is very easy too. Sharpies are wonderfully forgiving on the surface of a domino. You can easily clean any areas that appear muddy by just rubbing and removing the unwanted colour with a Sharpie and cleaning the point on the scrap piece of paper. Do this until you've removed all the dirty colour you didn't want. I made a domino pin as an award for my Yahoo Group called Fine That Stamp! I was working on my own design with orange letters outlined in black. I didn't like the way one of the letters looked so I simply rubbed the orange marker over the black outline until I'd effectively removed it. I then cleaned the orange marker, re-coloured the letter, and outlined it in black again ... viola, fixed! Removing unwanted colour on a part of domino that you wish to keep the natural domino colour is also quite easy. I like to use one of the tiny touch applicators by Suze Weinberg Design Studios, with a very small amount of rubbing alcohol. Carefully dab at and remove the unwanted colour. Don't use too much rubbing alcohol because you can risk smearing a part of the coloured areas. Try shaking the bottle and using whatever liquid has collected in the lid. I don't think sealing dominoes after using Sharpies is necessary, but you might want to depending on how much handling your domino will be subjected to. I performed some experiments by scratching and rubbing at the images and the dominoes weren't damaged. The glossy surface of the dominoes is also retained after being coloured with Sharpies. But if you want to seal your coloured dominoes, try using 3-D Crystal Lacquer or the Krylon spray sealers. I recommend using a very light misting of a workable fixative first, before applying a gloss or matte spray sealer to prevent the inks from running. If you apply a heavy coat of either the workable fixative or the finishing sealers, the inks will run. Drilling Dominoes Drilling dominoes is not as difficult as you may think. You don't need special tools, but a drill press would be helpful. Members of my DominoArt group have had great success with using a variable speed Dremel tool. I use a standard household drill. Use a small vice clamped to a table. Place the domino inside a folded-up piece of paper inside the vice to prevent the domino from slipping and being scratched. The key to drilling dominoes is to go slowly and keep the drill as vertical as possible so that you don't drill the holes at an angle. To drill a hole all the way through a domino, I recommend marking the location of the hole on each side of the domino first. Then drill half way through the domino on one side, and finish drilling the hole from the other side until you break through in the center. Doing it this way ensures that your hole is straight, and you won't chip the domino when the drill bit breaks through to the other side. |