Where to Buy Alcohol Ink? Some advice from an artist on getting started

So you are ready to take the dive into alcohol inks and explore this new artistic medium, but where do you even start? What is needed to get going? You just need a few basics: a place to work, a substrate to apply alcohol inks to, and some inks. Where is it best to buy alcohol ink? In-store or online? Here are some thoughts from an artist...

Where can I buy alcohol ink?

It used to be really hard to find alcohol ink in hobby stores. They used to be confined to the stamping sections of the stores if they were even there to begin with. But now, almost all major hobby and art stores carry at least one brand of them. Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, and many local stores carry them and even Curry’s Art Store in Canada. But it is usually sold at quite the premium in store so many turn to online stores to find a good price and get them shipped right to their door. 

With the rising popularity of alcohol inks in painting and DIY projects, many cheap inks are appearing on the market, and these get the job done for basic projects, but if you want to start a collection of varied nuanced colors, T-Rex Inks is a fabulous brand to start with. These colors are hand picked by a worldwide sold artist, Tiffani Buteau, who started the company because she wanted to make affordable beautiful colors that she would use in her art, colors that didn’t exist on the market. These come in packs that make sense to an artist, a Starter Pack of the 12 basics color tones, and two more more nuanced packs called Warm Earthtones, and Cool Earthtones (links below).

Each bottle is about ⅓ bigger than most the more expensive half ounce bottles on the market, making them affordable too. This is crucial to starting out because you need freedom to spill and play with the ink without the pressure of every drop being too expensive to make a mistake. Mistakes are part of learning and essential! And the beauty of buying packs is that you have some colors that you are naturally drawn to and then others that will move you to experiment and play with, thus growing as an artist. 

Try out these Alcohol Ink Sets to get started: 

• 12 STARTER SET: Perfect basic colors to get you started in bigger bottles
• 12 WARM EARTHtones: Colors in the warm spectrum to give you artistic nuances
• 12 COOL EARTHtones: Cooler toned colors for dreamy landscapes