Who's ink pads do you love and why?

I love both of the distress and oxide ink pads. I like how they react to water.

I have a ton of the TH pads and they work well and for yearssssssss. I don't stamp a ton, so my recommendation isn't the most thorough.

I think it really really depends on what you want to do. I know you said you mainly make cards, but are you into mixed media cards? Clean and simple cards? A lot of words and sentiments cards? I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch, but different inks do different things...I love mixed media, blending ink, spritzing with water and stamping in color, so the Distress Oxides are great for me and I love them. Plus I love the colors. I don't have them all, but I do have about 40. I also have about 40 regular Distress, as I had those before oxides came out. 

For sentiments and crisp images, and watercoloring images, I love Versafine Clair. I have 6 of those. I also have some Hero Arts Unicorn White, but I'd like to find another White. I don't really love that one. 

I wanted some small cubes so I bought some inexpensive Hero Arts cubes, they are okay, some dried out very fast. I'd like to try some Catherine Pooler or Altenew as I like the idea of color families. 

Final thoughts are that ink is not a one size fits all situation, but more taking a comprehensive look at what you want to do with your ink will tend to guide you. Hope that helps and you find what you need! 

For colored inks I like Catherine Pooler - they stamp crisply and have rich colors but they can also be used for blending and water reactive techniques. Some people don’t like the foam pads though. If you watch Ardyth on YT she uses CP inks for all kinds of stenciling, direct to paper (instead of buying colored cs) and stamping.

I have mixed feelings about distress oxides - very easy to blend, yes, but I prefer the clear colors of regular distress (or CP inks) rather than the chalky look of oxides. They work on dark cs but that also means they cover up stamped lines if you stamp first then stencil. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t bought into the oxide craze, and other times I want more colors. Lol.

I'll second, the thought it all depends what you want/like to do with inks.

I do mainly scrapbooking and I also really like Catherine Pooler inks. It takes maybe a time or two to get the feel that you only need to touch you stamp lightly to the pad to ink it. I too like how crisp and clean they stamp. She has a really good choice of colors, and I think the color wheels you can download to help you coordinate colors are pretty helpful and can give you ideas for colors you might not have used together. The other thing I really like its her mini sizes - bigger than 1" cube, but smaller than a full pad.

I've been ordering mine A Cherry On Top when they have one go their 20% off everything sales and that helps make them a little more budget friendly.

I've just done this exact same thing 6 months ago. I sold all my SU! ink because I wasn't happy with it. The drying time, splotchy stamping and the images weren't crisp. I will say I stamp on scrapbooking pages and PL cards...rarely do I do cards anymore. So most of my stamping is text.

I decided to go with Gina K ink cubes for a couple of reasons. They stamp very well with clean crisp lines, dry quickly and have the felt pads. I do have a lot of oxides as well that I do use but those are a different animal altogether. Since I've gotten the new Gina K inks I've been reaching for my stamps more often and using all the colors. Some of my SU inks I hadn't even opened in 3 years. For me it was a good choice.

What is the quality of American Crafts ink pads? I have a quad in my ACOT cart because it matches a 4th of July paper pad. Reds are so hard to match, but if the quality isn’t there, I’ll pass on it.

Pink Fresh for their color bundles with four different shades in each color palette.

Concord & 9th for their unique colors.

Versa Fine Clair Nocturne for stamping greetings/sentiments in black.

Lawn Fawn Jet Black for stamping if I'm coloring with Copics.

tim holtz because i purposely chose them and Stampin Up because i bought a carousel with 48 stamps and grew to like them.

 I don't have tons though.. but off all the random ink pads I do have.. TH are the ones I use... and they do last for yearrrsss.

As have I! And all this talk of inks really got me in the mood to learn to stencil so I just purchased a layered set along with some new to me ink to test out: a Pinkfresh quad in green, a Gina K in Coral and a Concord & 9th in Honeysuckle. Today I tested all of my inks and had to throw a couple dozen out. I have some Versafine, Momento, StazOn, Archival Distressed, pigmented, and many brands of chalk inks including Altenew, Ts$*#k* Dew Drops, SEI and ColorBox. I understand from use and tons of helpful pea info about the benefits of the first listed inks. But what is the difference between chalk and dye inks?

I misremembered what kind of inks my Altenew pads are. Thanks for the clarification on the Dew Drops and chalk ink! So is it just pigment ink that dries more quickly? What have you used chalk inks for? That’s the only thing different I noticed about the chalk inks yesterday, that they dried almost instantly as stamped images. But not when I edge the paper (looks at still stained hands).