Tip on blending marker color & link to video Letraset Promarker Review

I was watching this video review on Letraset Promarkers from Jenny at CraftTestDummies.com, and during the video, she happened to mention that rubbing alcohol can be used for blending your markers (any alcohol marker I think--not sure about the water and ink based like Tombows or Faber-Castell Pitts).

With the bleedthrumanade I've been doing, I've been running my blender pens dry, left and right, so I tried it out, and Yup! It works.  However, I'm not going to through away my blender pens just yet.

You can get even more watercolor like streak effects, but I've found it's harder to control the flow, and I ended up causing my paper to pill, and buckle.  I think this is a matter of practice, but I'm going to supplement but not replace my pens.  So far, I've used a q-tip, a cotton makeup pad, and applied the alcohol to an almost out of ink marker.  I also have a dried up blender pen that I dipped into the alcohol, but it still doesn't work quite as nicely as the blender pen did.

So, I'm sure many of you already knew about this trick.  Got any suggestions?

Comments

  1. Try soaking the felt tip of the blender pen in some rubbing alcohol until the entire fibre is saturated, including that held inside the ferrule. That may make it last longer. You also may be able to open the blender pen and fill it with alcohol; many pens can be opened at one end or the other...keep playing! I look forward to your bleedthrumanade posts!

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  2. There is a material called 'Zest'..... (or something similar) that Jane Monk sells on her site (for blending), but it apparently cannot be sold outside of Australia. She sells it in a kit. We should learn more about it.

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  3. Regarding Zest-It, here's the info I posted as a comment on Jane's post:

    My hubby is a coloured pencil artist; he uses a citrus solvent made by a company called Eco-House. We buy it at a local arts supplies store (we're in Canada), and Dick Blick carries it in the U.S.

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