Back in my high school days, a long long time ago, my mom and I were really into stamping. She was a representative for a direct sales stamp company so we were pretty faithful to a certain brand of ink. After a few years, I went off to college and became “too cool” for stamping anymore. The more involved I get with paper crafting and memory keeping now, the more interested I’m becoming in stamping again and I feel like a total newbie to the ink market. When I had the chance to review these Radiant Neon Stamp Pads from Tsukineko, I jumped at it!
The line of Radiant Neon inks just launched at Winter CHA 2014 and are brand spankin’ new. The Tsukineko site describes them like this:
- Luscious pigment ink with eye-popping color
- 7 dynamic colors that are striking on both light and dark colored cardstock
- Highly fade resistant, blendable archival ink
- Available in full-size inkpads and inkers
The ink pad is a pigment ink, which means it’s a thicker and juicier ink that will sit on top of the paper instead of soaking into your paper. For these reasons, it takes a little longer for the ink to air dry adequately or might even require the use of a heat gun to set the ink.
The picture below shows how much ink was left on my stamp the first time I lightly pressed it into the Radiant Neon ink. I told you it was nice and juicy! I had actually had too much ink on my stamp as it filled in my image. No bueno. When working with these pads for the first time, use a light hand.
Another rookie mistake: not allotting the appropriate time frame for the ink to fully dry. The images on the left were left to air dry and the image on the right was set with a heat gun. The color became richer as the ink dried with the heat.
I ran a tissue over the air dried images a solid five minutes after initially stamping them on standard white card stock. That original juicy image smeared and lost all crispness. That is actually the one downfall I found when working with the pigment inks; it’s tough to get a really sharp image with the amount of ink on the pads.
I wanted to see how the Radiant Neon inks would fare on some smoother, coated card stock. If this is the way you want to go, I’d recommend using a light hand when inking your image and having a very steady hand when stamping the image on your paper. The bottom image was my first attempt and without re-inking at all, I stamped the top image. I got a much better result.
The neon of the ink definitely stood out against the black card stock; I was impressed at how well it could still be seen.
I also wanted to test out a non-paper medium with the Radiant Neon stamp pads. Since wood veneer seem to be all the rage right now, I wanted to see how the ink would adhere to them. Here is my wood veneer before pressing the ink pad directly on to it:
And here is how it looks afterwards. I did choose to heat set the ink with my heat gun to make sure that none of the ink would be coming off. Within 20 seconds of heating the wood, it was completely dry and ready to be used. I wiped my finger across it, chipped at it with my nail, and pressed it ink-side-down onto a piece of paper with no transfer.
I really loved how the wood veneer turned out so I put together a sweet little Spring-y gift box with it. I have the perfect little gift in mind for my son’s teacher!
Disclosure: product provided for review, but my opinion is based on my first-hand experiences with the product and are honest and my own.
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I love how it looks on the wood!! I was thinking about all the chalk board stuff that is so popular right now, that they may look nice on all the black or chalkboard paper. As always, I love your reviews!!! Thank you!
I agree…”neat!”
Generally speaking I am not a fan of neon colors. Even as a mid eighties teenager I was over it. But these look amazing and I could absolutely see them being used as accents like you did here (and I love the blue…the only highlighter color I will use, the rest burn my retinas!).
I love this ink! Am I biased? Oh yes 🙂 I love how it pops on crisp white card and its pigment and saturation quality allow you to change the color of white card stock in one swipe! Mix some with water and splash it around on a journal page, It sings! Blend it with gesso for calmer brights. Sexy and sumptuous says I 🙂
Katie- such a great review and I love your project!