homemade alcohol ink with Sharpies

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I made some homemade alcohol inks.  I THOUGHT these were going to be amazing, and then I did a bunch of testing and thought they were a  complete failure, but then I did some more testing and decided maybe I have a place for them in my art after all.  And since living with a 5th grade boy makes me think and speak like a 5th grade boy, I sum up the experiment this way:

I first heard mention of this in a facebook group a few weeks ago and put it on my list of things I should look into.  Then I read about it again on TJ's blog and decided to actually do it. So I found this video on You-Tube (which I watched just enough of to get the basic idea of how to do it and then turned it off.  given my mixed results, maybe I should have watched the whole video and followed it up with her part 2 instructions)

The bullet points:

• break open a sharpie and soak the inky insert in some rubbing alcohol.  
• done

I bought cheap travel sized spray bottles and a big bottle of rubbing alcohol and raided my abundant stash of sharpies (many of which were inherited when my office closed a few years ago so I didn't pay anything for them)

It was quick and easy (and smelly and a little messy) and the colors were VIBRANT!

So then I set about testing them on a bunch of different surfaces.  I took a file folder and attached various papers and tapes and started spraying.  TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT.  The colors were muted - some almost non-existent.  And the SMELL.  Man-oh-man it smelled like a hospital ward.  For hours. (Oddly the cat was fascinated by this and hovered near the smelly papers all afternoon).

Here are the results of my experiments:

Clockwise from upper left:  water color paper, cereal box covered in gesso, plain cereal box, book page, copy paper, card stock

 Clockwise from upper left: Tyvek (which has been ironed), masking tape, aluminum tape, clear packing tape.

I called it a day at this point and nearly dumped them down the drain in disappointment.
But I took up the cause again this morning and had better results.  I noticed that the colors were most vibrant on bright white, smooth, not-too-absorbant paper, so I started there.

Here's a test palette on some mixed media paper (with the corresponding sharpie color for comparison)

I tried it with some stencils on cheap copy paper.  Not bad:

Then I tried yellow, orange and red in a cheap sketchbook and filled it up with notes on what I'd learned.

Advantages: 

cheap

dries quickly

transparent

easy to write over it

permanent - doesn't smudge when reworked

overlapping colors blend well

gives a nice effect with stencils

Disadvantages:

smelly

colors are muted 

bleeds through to the other side of most papers

beads up on plastic and metal surfaces.  it dries and leaves the color in little droplets

did I mention smelly?

Final assessment:  not what I'd hoped for, but if I can tolerate the smell I will use it to create some interesting background effects.

If any of you have experience with homemade inks leave me a comment.