Help! Watercolouring and stamping
 

Hi there,

I have been practising my watercolour techniques by using different things like watercolour pencils and Marvy Brush Markers. I am using Watercolour paper.

When using the Markers, I am having a problem with the stamp bleeding. I am using a Marvy Dye Based Ink Pad. I have also used my heat gun in between colours to make sure it is dry.

Should I be using something like StayzOn or the like? What description on the ink should I be looking for that means that it is waterproof???

Thanks for your help!

With watercolor you need an ink like India Ink (by Stewart Superior) or Stampin' Up!'s basic black. It needs to be a dye ink that's made specifically to be waterproof.

A regular dye ink will bleed when it gets wet. I like using Versafine ink - it's an instant drying pigment ink that gives really crisp images. Memento works too - on the back of both those inkpads it says "water resistant". Hope that helps! Welcome to SCS, by the way!

Like Dina I often use Versafine if I'm going to watercolour. It's oil-based which is what gives it good water resistance, I guess. Stazon works well, too but I prefer not to use it if I don't have to because of the extra clean-up effort on the stamp! Versafine wipes off easily with a babywipe and it conditions your stamps while you're at it - gotta love that!

LOVE versafine

Ranger Archival is waterproof, too.

Thanks all for your help. Pretty silly question but some tutorials I looked at said to make sure I had dye based ink but that wasn't working!! I will try Versafine as I like the sound of the easy clean up!! LOL.

I wonder whether they meant for the actual colouring rather than the stamping? You can use inks as the watercolour itself rather than using pencils, markers etc. Worth being clear if that's what you mean though!

Another really good option is the Faber-Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist Pen in black. It's India Ink, and you can color only the areas of the stamp that you want. This is great if you are building a stampscape and are only using the one element on the stamp.
-c

Versafine is my choice, too. It also is great for detailed stamps.

I like Staz on the best. SU! Black and brown inks are supposed to be waterproof but I found they aren't. They could have changed the formula as my inks are from 2004 or 5 but the examples I'm referring to were done when the pads were new. I used to water colour everything that needed colouring and I used water colour crayons. The bleeding effect actually got worse with time. I found some older cards I'd forgotten about, stored in a dry place away from water and they looked horrible! So I'd definitely not recommend it. I've not tried it myself but although being water based, the Memento ink chart that shows possible technique and surface uses from their website, has a check mark under watercoloring.

Another vote for Versafine.

I used to use w/c pencils with ordinary dye-based ink. You can't put much water on or it will definitely bleed. You can emboss the ink. Then the embossing acts as a resist. I really like white/clear embossing with w/c over it. I have used StazOn with w/c, but not on w/c paper. Does it not penetrate the texture well or something?

My vote is for Memories Black ink. It is actually the only black ink I use. I even have better results with it than Staz-on when using it on polished tile and plastic.