Article submitted by MPL’s Teen Associate, Kristin Keck
I’m Kristin Keck, the Teen Services associate at Manitowoc Public Library, and I’m a packrat.
I like stuff, especially stuff I can make other stuff with. The amount of stuff that can be turned into other stuff in my house is staggering—yarn and paper and bits of interesting rock, feathers, leaves, the lids of boxes, used stamps, fabric of all sorts, t-shirts that don’t fit, glass ornaments and broken jewelry, and ribbon from packages. It’s hard to know what will come in useful or add a finishing touch to something and, yes, it all sparks joy.
I’ve never met a craft I didn’t want to try. I particularly like process art, where the goal isn’t to be good so much as to be present for the making of something new. Things like collage and acrylic pours make me very happy.
So, when I was hunting around in the cupboards at the library one day looking for stuff to spark program ideas and came across a box of square ceramic tiles, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them. Ceramic tiles. Alcohol inks. Easy.
I’ve used alcohol inks before, but never on ceramic tiles. On porous things like tissue paper, alcohol ink soaks through several layers to blend in unpredictable ways, making vibrant backgrounds for cards or collages. It’s unpredictable and fun. On ceramic tile, the ink floats on top, blending without dissipating, creating transparent effects like stained glass.
At least, that’s what all the TikTok videos looked like.
I bought some supplies I didn’t have (blending solution for alcohol inks, some cool daubers, and 99% isopropyl alcohol), brought my alcohol inks into work, and took two slightly damaged tiles for experimentation. And I learned three things almost immediately:
- 99% isopropyl alcohol will dry your fingers out painfully. I should’ve worn gloves.
- Alcohol inks stain. To be fair, I knew this already, but using the monster alcohol to clean the workroom table and drying my hands out even further was a good reminder.
- This is SO MUCH FUN!
Alcohol ink on tile is a completely different animal from the same stuff on paper. It really does float on top of the glaze. Tilting the tile makes it run in little streams. It can be blown around for feathers or dripped and dropped like ripples in a pool or swirled like galaxies. The ink dries very quickly but more ink will wake it up again, blending in unpredictable ways that do give that stained glass look.
I tried different techniques—dropping the ink first and then the blending solution, doing the solution first and then the ink, using a straw to blow the ink around, using the cool daubers to daub and blend, using paintbrushes to try to get a flower-looking shape, just tilting the tile to see where the ink went on its own. It was mesmerizing. If the colors got too muddy or the flower wasn’t sufficiently flower shaped—and it wasn’t—a quick wipe with the alcohol gave me a clean tile again.
I enjoyed myself immensely. If this sounds like a mess you’d like to make, drop by the library’s Balkansky Community Room on Thursday, April 9, at 6 PM for the Teen Hang-out: ArtLab—Alcohol Ink On Tiles. The tiles are first come, first served. All supplies will be provided, including gloves.
