Review - Spectrum Noir Sparkle Glitter Liquid Ink

I was sent a pack of Spectrum Noir Sparkle Glitter Liquid Ink, Enchanted Hues, which include a pink (Cotton Candy), blue (Teacup) and yellow (Firefly) to have a play and test them out.  The colours are beautiful and the liquid a clear strong colour with the glitter at the bottom of the containers; a light shake however mixes them well and creates a lovely sparkling swirling mix for painting and using with papercrafts.  This settles again reasonably quickly once left still.

I started working with them by testing how the liquid ink colours spread and mix when spread using a simple paintbrush, sorry I'm not good at videos.  The three colours painted smoothly with a good amount of colour and mixed/merged together well creating a green, dark purple and a slight orange (though the pink is definitely more dominant than the yellow and the blue more dominant than the pink).  As they dried (reasonably quickly) the sparkle became more evident with all three colours having a beautiful sheen to them.

I then painted several sections of white card with different colours and once dry die cut them to create two cards.

One with a fish bowl theme, using Underwater Friends set from Die-Cutting Essentials #36 (with the bowl, fish and other elements cut out of painted card, as well as the sentiment for contrast).  This worked really well with the water (done using the blue liquid ink, Teacup) having a lovely sparkle to it and the fish (cut out of card coloured with the pink liquid ink , Cotton Candy, and yellow liquid ink, Firefly) a slight glint.  The sentiment didn't sparkle as much though this could be due to the thinness of the letters.  I should also note that the card was still a little damp/soft when I cut it and this made it harder to take out of the die, make sure it is really dry before cutting.

For the second card I painted a background in the pink liquid ink (Cotton Candy) and left it to dry.  I then used a Tattered lace die (Bring out the Magic, a Magician's hat with butterflies flying out) and cut this once in white card and a second time (just the hat) with card painted in the Blue liquid ink (Teacup).  I finished this card with a simple stamped "Happy Birthday".  The sparkle on this is fantastic.

I next added some of the yellow liquid ink (Firefly) into a small water spray bottle using a syringe.  After giving it a good shake I sprayed it over a coffee stencil (from Coffee Break set, Simply Cards & Papercraft #177) on a pale yellow paper to find it did not work through the stencil and soaked underneath, just covering the card.  Not to be put off I changed tactics and just used the spray bottle to cover the card.  This worked perfectly and gave a really good all over light cover of sparkling yellow to the card.  I would say the spray bottle, while diluted, gave a better result than using a paint brush to cover the card, for backing paper purposes, as I did with the Cotton Candy for the previous card.

Once the sprayed card had dried I stuck with the coffee theme and using the stamps from the same set stamped out the coffee cup in black ink and one of the cup holder patterns with embossing ink which I then painted with the pink liquid ink (Cotton Candy).  This I then warmed with my heat embossing tool.  Although you can see the pattern I had stamped, it is very light and my judgement would be that this hasn't worked so well; where the embossing ink was stamped is slightly darker, it is not that visible.

I had another go with embossing, this time stamping and using clear embossing powder.  Once heated I sprayed it with the diluted liquid ink, this time a mix of the blue (Teacup) and yellow (Firefly) which had created a nice green.  Once the ink had dried it created a nice effect round the embossed sentiment, with lots of sparkle to it.

I tried this again using different embossing powders and comparing them once dry I would say it’s worked best with the silver embossing powder (the two on the right).  The clear powder, when embossed, shows through (top left) but the sparkling clear powder (bottom left) has not worked.  I also tried painting a sheet with the embossed sentiment (in sliver) with the pink liquid ink, using a brush, and feel that the sprayed ink finished better as it looks more consistent in colour and has spread at the edges; whereas the painted pink is a little heavy and slightly blotchy.  Though both techniques have a fantastic sheen to them (unfortunately I'm not sure if the camera captured this).

For a final play I again used the yellow liquid ink (Firefly) which I had diluted in the spray bottle.  This time I used it to spray onto white card which gave it a very light yellow, but sparkly, look.  I used my heat tool to speed up the drying and this did cause the ink to run a little where there was too much, but it made a nice effect.

I then die cut a base and 6 basket sides in white card using the 3D basket die set from Die-Cutting Essentials #63.  I used cut 6 floral sides in green card and a back for each of these in the white, yellow sprayed card.  Once put together the effect of the glitter liquid ink through the daffodil pattered sides looks great.