Favorite ink colors for scrapping?

Probably my most used ink for stamping on layouts is Wendy Vecchi Archival in Watering Can, it's the perfect grey, dark enough to be clearly legible on everything but not so dark as to overwhelm like a good black would.

My most used Distess Oxides are Tattered Rose and Speckled Egg. You could probably take away all the other distress colours I own and I could make do with just those two. My favourite soft pink ink is VersaMagic chalk ink in Pixie Dust, and my go to navy is Lawn Fawn Deep Sea.

I've got a reasonable range of colours and brands, but these are the most used inks in my stash.

I love color so for me it's a rainbow of colors.

I use black most for stamping words and outlines or stamps you don't color in (it's not my thing anyways).

I have a lot of stamps and stencils where I use color.

So I have cubes and mini stamp pads as well as regular size stamp pads.

For my cards for the swap, I inked the edges of vellum clouds.

Other times I outline in pink or black.

For me having the option is key.

I started out small and then realized what I needed and built my collection from there.

Great question PaperAngel. Recently I went through my old ink pads and got rid of lots that had dried out or crumbled (most of the cat's eye chalk inks). And some had just withered away from non-use.
I've been trying to selectively replace my inks and have a few shades of the Distress Oxides. Vintage Photo was always a color that I used quite a bit for inking edges and distressing. There was also a cat's eye - creamy brown - that was a favorite; sort of a light malted milk color. Of course Colorbox is no longer in business so I need to find a similar color.
The above answers are really helpful so I can check out some of the colors/brands mentioned.

Archival black and grey and my go-to's but recently I'm loving keeping a navy handy. I am not much of a stamper but trying hard to do more.

For a long time I inked all of my edges in brown. My go to brown was, and still is, TH Gathered Twigs. I have it in both the regular and oxide. It's a nice medium brown, not too warm, not too cool.

Now I am more likely to ink in a colour that closely matches my paper. It gives the edges a "finished" look. It's a subtle difference, but one that I really like. This means that I'm getting a lot more mileage from my Distress Ink Pads, and that my collection of oxides is growing

This thread is wonderful! Thanks to all of you who posted faves. I am looking them up and adding them to wish lists as I post this.

I was so bummed to discover that there will not be any replacements for my old Colorbox favorites (Creamy Brown was one of my favorites, too, hoopsfn. There was also a pale blue that I loved and used often.)

Most of my recent pics feature either ocean or mountains. My current most-used ink color, by FAR, is Rustic Wilderness Distress Oxide. I also use a lot of Bundled Sage Distress Oxide, which coordinates beautifully with the Rustic Wilderness. My other current most-used color is Stormy Sky Distress Oxide.

If you add up all the pages I've ever scrapped over the years, my all-time most-used color in the past was Tea Dye Distress Ink. Walnut Stain Distress Ink is also high on my list of most-used colors. I don't use black all that much; I usually reach for Walnut Stain as a replacement for black.

Yes, if you are inclined to try stamping your own embellishments, you can save a lot of money that way -- especially if you already own cute stamp sets you could be using. I stamp my own layered flower embellishments, journaling spots, and other embellishments. I often stamp page titles too. The flower stamps I've bought have totally paid for themselves because I buy packaged flower embellishments a lot less frequently now.

The tradeoff is that stamping your embellishments can take a lot more time than just buying them. I get around this issue by production stamping; if I go to all the trouble of inking up a stamp, I try to stamp 10 or 20 of the same image at one time. Then I organize the stamped images along with my other embellishments so that I can find them when I actually need to use them.

This works if you make an effort to buy stamps that can be re-used multiple times without the images getting tiresome. If you use the same journaling spots or leafy embellishments multiple times on your layouts, it gives a cohesive look. But you can't necessarily use the same focal stamp over and over the same way.

Paget, I am right there with you, wanting a new red color. I have Fired Brick, and I do use it, but I don't reach for it all that often as compared against my other colors. Part of the issue might be just that I have the Distress Ink and not the Oxide. I prefer the Oxides.


My most-used red is Memento Love Letter, but I really would like to get one of the Distress Oxide reds, too. I'd love to know which red you end up with and how you end up liking it. 

Stamping on layouts: navy, teal/aqua, grey, brown, orange (I seem to use a lit of orange on beach pages...)

Inking edges: 99% of the time I use Distress pumice stone (not the oxide, the regular Distress)

I always reach for my black versafine. Usually for stamping words or dates.

I used to swear by VersaFine black, until I bought the Altenew Obsidian Pigment Ink. OMG that thing stamps amazing.

I typically don't ink my edges but when I do it is Distress Ink Black or walnut stain.

I use navy alot too, Versafine Clair.

Gray: Versafine Clair Morning Mist.

Everything on my page is coordinated off the photo. I don't recall using stamp on a page.