Pink Tinsel Pipe Cleaners! A Tutorial:)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm happy to show you how to make silver tinsel pipe cleaners a lovely pink color. You can refer to my first Joli Paquet tutorial for basic instructions on this technique. Getting pink is a bit trickier, but it can still be done easily.

You will need the silver tinsel stems from the craft store, Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks in Red Pepper, Terra Cotta and Cranberry and Tim Holtz Blending Solution which is a companion product to the alcohol inks. I will show you how to color one pipe cleaner and how to do a large quantity. If you do one at a time, you will need some felt and a wood stamping block would be handy, but not totally necessary. My first tutorial tells how I get the felt to stick to the block. You can also just hold the felt in your hand. It will be messy, but who cares?

I was able to get a hot pink and a more muted pink doing them one at a time.

I know it's hard to see in this photo. Sorry about that. I guess you'll just have to trust me:) I could not get the hot pink when dying the larger quantity. Less control over the amounts of each ink color.

Cut your felt to a workable size and dot with Red Pepper as shown below. (I searched my studio for white felt so you could better distinguish the colors, but I came up empty-handed. sorry).

Then dot some Terra Cotta around as shown below (a little less than the red pepper).

Finally, add some Cranberry as shown below. Again, a bit less Cranberry than Terra Cotta.

Rub the felt back and forth over the stem.

This will give you the hot pink color. To tone down the color cut a clean piece of felt and squirt on some Blending Solution.

Rub the Blending Solution soaked felt over the pipe cleaner until you get the shade of pink you want. The Blending Solution decreases the color saturation. If you go too far with the blending solution, you will get back to a silver tinsel stem. Just add more of the inks and tone it down again with the blending solution.

If you want to do a larger quantity, place a hand full in a big baggie or cello bag. Squirt in a nice amount of Red pepper and mash/squish it all around with your hands on the outside of the baggie. Your hands will get VERY messy. They clean up nicely with alcohol or blending solution:)

When you get the stems (watching the ends) pretty well covered with Red Pepper it's time to squirt in a good amount of Terra Cotta. They change to a more orange/red tone as shown below.

Now, put the stems covered with Red Pepper and Terra Cotta in a NEW CLEAN bag and add Cranberry. Not as much Cranberry as Terra Cotta and Red Pepper.

So, now they are pretty red. Put these stems in another new bag and squirt in some Blending Solution. Here they are after one wash of Blending Solution (below).

They start turning pink! It's really cool! Put them in another clean bag and wash again with Blending Solution. I did three washes (mushing & squishing the Blending Solution all over the pipe cleaners) to come up with this color:

The reason for putting them in a clean bag several times toward the end is so you can better see and control the color changes. You will also see, after a few washes, that some of the stems still have a bit too much red. Take those stems out and put them in yet another clean bag for an additional Blending Solution wash. Being careful not to take the pink parts back to silver. Lay the stems out on a sheet of paper to dry. Clean up your mess with alcohol because there is no sense in wasting good blending solution:)

Hope you have fun with this. There are limitless possibilities with these alcohol inks. If you like a more purple/pink try using Wild Plum in place of Terra Cotta. These are so much prettier IRL. Wish I could capture them properly with my camera. Try it; you'll like it:)

Hope you didn't eat too much today! Thanks for stopping by:)

xo.....Donna