Those taskmasters over at Craft Critique

are keeping me busy!

Here's my latest article...

I stamped something...

It had to happen eventually!

My oldest child starts kindergarten tomorrow. I'm a little freaked out. He's determined that he's not riding the bus, but the police helicopter will be picking him up instead. Oh really? Where does he get this stuff?

We had the opportunity to meet his teacher tonight, so of course I busted out my "best mom of the year" goodies to spoil her before she got to meet my kid. As I was doing the background check on her (you think I'm kidding...), I discovered she has a blog, wherein she stated that she loves cooking Italian food, and has been to Italy several times. AHA! As it happens, my garden is completely overrun with purple & green basil. So, I whipped up this boxy bag, inspired by TexasJodyLynn (mine has different measurements, but it was definitely her idea...), cut a bunch of basil, stuck it in a baggie, and voila, my kid gets straight A's right out of the box. Bag. Boxy bag.
























And here's the matching card


















both of them together















never let it be said that I can't stamp....

Hey kids...

New post up at Craft Critique...

Ergh. It's the 14th. I was SO going to enter PaperTrey's guest star stamper thingy with the 3 sets I bought last month, but I just didn't get to it. Oh well... maybe next month!

The MOTHER of all black ink tests...

Well, I finally did it... a no-holds-barred look at 14 different black inks, 3 different markers and three different card stocks.

I did a similar study back in early 2007, and posted my results on SplitCoastStampers; holy moly, was I ever a rock star then! The biggest names of stamping commented on that post, and the queen herself, Julie Ebersole, mentioned little ole me on her blog. Then I passed out.

But, I knew my work was not finished... there were MORE black inks out there, and clearly I needed them. So, now I've got them. I'm up to 14 black inks, some I've had for years, a few I just opened today (don't tell my husband!).

Here are the players, in alphabetical order by manufacturer:


Papers:
Georgia Pacific White
PaperTrey Ink Stamper's Select in White
Stampin' Up! Whisper White

Markers:
Copic Lemon Yellow
Prismacolor Deco Yellow
Stampin' Up! Barely Banana (yes, I know, this is not an alcohol-based marker).

Weather conditions:
79 degrees F, 44% humidity, a perfect August day in Delaware (just above sea level), and why am I inside again?

The process:

• Created a grid and printed it on the three different card stocks with my laser printer.
• Stamped each ink into its appropriate box.
• Carefully cleaned the stamp between inks with a three-step process:

1. Ultraclean, then dry
2. Stampin' Mist, then dry
3. Swipe with a baby wipe

• Allowed grids to dry for 30 minutes while starting this post
• Colored over the lines (on purpose) with the appropriate marker
• Cleaned each marker nib, each time, by coloring on a sheet of printer paper
• Swiped a line of the matching colorless blender pen through each colored area
• Checked for bleeding, feathering & smearing
• Ranked the inks 1, 2, or 3 on each grid
• Entered the results into a spreadsheet, tallied and averaged the results

**Please note: I did not heat-set any of the inks, because I wanted to see the results of the average (lazy like me) stamper. Heat-setting the pigment inks would probably improve their performance**

Results:

• A ranking of 1 indicated no black ink movement with the yellow marker or associated clear blender.
• A ranking of 2 indicated no to minimal movement with the yellow, some movement with the clear blender.
• A ranking of 3 was a hot mess. Movement with both marker and blender.
• I threw the SU! marker results out of the averaging, because they were the true definition of hot mess. So, the averaging only took alcohol-based markers into account.

I was VERY impressed with Ranger's Nick Bantock Ink and Tsukineko's Memento... that stuff didn't budge with either of the alcohol-based markers or their clear blenders. Ranger's Adirondack and Distress inks also fared very well. As for the rest of them, well, you can be the judge (click for a larger view):




As for the papers, the PTI smeared the least, followed by the Georgia Pacific, and then the Stampin' Up! Whisper White.

Between the alcohol-based markers themselves, the Prismacolor smeared less than the Copic by 0.05 of a point (averaged), so I'd call that even.

Recommendations:
Ranger Nick Bantock or Memento on PaperTrey Ink. Anything else, you'll need to heat set or stay within the lines.

So what do you think?

Get ready...

That's it. Enough procrastinating. I'm doing it. THE GREAT BLACK INK CELEBRITY DEATH MATCH is ON!

Check in later today for the results!

*Edited to add*
By the way, I own 13 different black inks. Thirteen. Insanity.