RQOTD: Have you swatched your inks?

For me, for dye inks, I'd prefer a true stamped image.  I was going to say the reason is because that's what I do with my dye inks...stamp images...but do ink blend with them sometimes.

I actually love your oxide swatches because those look like the "ink blended" colors which is what I use my oxides for.  I've never used my oxides to stamp an image.
 

Yes I've swatched out my Distress Oxides and Distress Inks and my other dye inks from random companies.

I use a small solid square stamp from an old Stamps of Life set and I keep these swatches in a 6x8 binder. I also will punch out a small 3/4" circle from a second solid square stamped image that I adhere to the ink pad container as well. That way I can quickly see what the "true" ink color is rather than going by the color on the ink pad top.

With my Distress Oxides I did a solid image but now that I see your gradient swatch I like that as well since I do use them for ink blending as well as solid stamping...

Swatching or inventorying takes a great deal of effort but it does pay off, especially if you maintain the system. That's the most important part - design something you're happy to keep doing each time you get a new thing for that grouping.

I'm also on an organizing kick. I've got a literal armload of cutting dies from purchases in Oct-Nov that need to have all their pointy connection points sanded smooth. It's a lot of work but I've done it for every set I've ever gotten and I'm not stopping now. I really dislike touching otherwise smooth surfaces that have a rough/sharp area, and they chew up my magnetic sheets so they've got to go. Good excuse to throw on a podcast and spend a few hours zoning out with my diamond files.

I picked up two more swatching sets in my Oct/Nov spending spree, one specifically for inks and the other for sprays/jars/pastes. They have stamps and dies. Not sure if I'm going to implement them yet as I don't have a ton of any of those supplies except embossing powder but I'd rather have it in my stash than two years from now go "shoot I should have bought that set and now it's not available anymore".

Do have plans to somehow index my cardstock colours and a better swatching for my Copics than the single sheets I have now. They're fine but the colours look a bit different on cardstock compared to bleedproof marker pad. Haven't decided if it should be a swatch ring of cards, a flipbook, pocket pages or something else.

For wall colours I vote pale sky blue. My room's been that colour for decades and it still makes me happy looking at it. Anything but greige. *shudders*

At some point in the spring or summer, early in my journey back into paper crafting, I was obsessed with the "craft cart". I found a free Michael's online class about "Organizing Your Craft Cart" which led me down a Totally Tiffany rabbit hole. Totally reorganized (without buying any TT products from Michael's BTW) my craft space, including making some swatch sheets.

That was dozens of ink cubes ago....

I can see that individual swatch squares, tags or cards are more easily rearranged than a single sheet. Not sure how I feel about pockets and binders vs. tags and rings. JMInk definitely doesn't seem to have any blank swatch document that I could find. I suppose it could be buried somewhere. Does anyone know of another one somewhere out on there?

On a vaguely related note, I never did get a craft cart, but the project cart she had in her gift guide video is tempting me strongly!

Here are a few pics of my swatch book.  I have divider pages with the color names and I separated out Blue, Green and Turquoise into different sections.  In addition to my dye and oxide inks, I also swatched my Nuvo drops and Alcohol inks.  I swatched my alcohol inks on cardstock which wasn't the best way to do it.  Right now, it's about 1" thick so it's pretty big.










Shakti . The editable downloads from Jennifer McGuire are here towards the bottom of the page.  To my surprise the Word doc version is there too. www.jennifermcguireink.com/2014/04/complete-ink-swatch-book-downloads.html

Thank you, pinklady.

Embri, sounds like filing off the connection points is completely optional, but what kind of file do you use? Is that a craft store item or just a very small hardware store sort of file?

Just don't do what I did. I bought some cute cheap note keeper tag thingies on binder rings and I thought I was being so smart because they were precut and hole punched. But of course, the paper sucks and the colors aren't true.

I have a solid stamp and I stamp each ink on a 2x2 square and file them in a binder. I do that for dye and distress oxides.

I love this set and have it. I don’t plan to drag my inks, just stamp them.

laylebymail.com/products/pre-order-swatch-this-inks

Thanks, MichyM, but Amazon is my retailer of last resort. I'm hoping to poke around and find either the Neenah or the Hammermill in reams anywhere but Amazon....

Discovering I had a preference was the most interesting thing about swatching!

But I don't think Hero Arts has either the subtlety/sophistication or the gradient/ombre sets that allow for such easy layered stamping.

I have nothing from the Stamp Market -- hearing about them for the first time here.