Backgrounds at The Craft Barn, and a chat about white pens.....

Good afternoon my lovelies.
A lovely warm day here in my corner of the world. I hope you are having similar. Firstly I thought I'd just let you know that I'm sharing a tag over at The Craft Barn Blog HERE if you want to pop on by and take a look I'd appreciate it. There are 3 layers to this tag. This is one of them........

Then. Something I've been meaning to do for a while now is chat about white pens. I often get asked in classes and at demos about them. It is one of those things that seems like searching for the holy grail ; the perfect white pen. So; let me begin by saying that this is not a review where I will say "This is THE ONE!" I thought I'd just share my thoughts.
So, in general; I have about 5 or 6 different white pens at my fingertips of which I generally reach for 3.

What are they? Well, I have Paint Markers both thick and thinner, Distress Markers (Picket Fence), Gelly Roll, Ranger's Inkssentials and Posca (The newer kid on the block)
The last 3 are the ones I use the most so these are the 3 I've used on this page.

 I'm guessing that you are looking at this and not seeing too much of a difference? You'd be right in a sense; there isn't a huge difference when it comes to basic mark making and writing.

 There are slight differences, I find that the Posca is less "scratchy" but you need to remember to press down every now and again to release more liquid otherwise your colour will fade while you are still writing!
If you look at the first picture of the whole page you will see in the bottom right side I've coloured in. Again, the Posca pen seemed to give a better and more solid coverage. In my humble opinion, all of these pens are fine and in my opinion there are different reasons for not getting the solid white that you expect.
Coming back to these pictures; I think you will agree that all 3 pens have given a good strong image? The background is painted with acrylic paint which, when dry, has no reactivity so there is minimal chance of the background colour being absorbed into the pen ink.
The same cannot be said for inks however....... Because the inks are generally moisture reactive there is more chance of some of the background colour leaching into the pen ink. Which leads me to what I think is the main issue with people not getting the crisp colour they want.... impatience. We do a lovely inky background and them start to write without giving it enough time to dry properly! I find it much better to leave it to dry overnight, or use a heat gun to dry before using white pens as the results are much much better.

Hope that makes sense. So, no need to rush out and get a new pen. Take time to experiment and find out how your existing pens work on different surfaces. Though, if you are looking for a new white pen, I do like these 3 the most!

Have a good evening.

 Ranger Inkssentials on Dylusions Inked background

 Gelly Roll on Dylusions inked background

Ranger Inkssentials on Dylusions.

See, it can be done!