Hi Everyone! Today I have a very quick idea on how to take Yupo paper cutouts, and make them look metallic. I’ve done lots of videos on what I do with these Yupo paper die cuts, and again, the reason I use Yupo paper is because it cuts my intricate and small designs much better on my Silhouette curio digital cutter. The Yupo paper cuts much nicer than regular cardstock, but it’s white. I usually want to color it to make it work with whatever I’m doing at the time, and in this cases, I want to make them look metallic. So this is a Take5 or less. In fact, the intro is probably longer than the actual project. 😉
Sometimes I just paint these Yupo paper cutouts. Usually I just will put out a little bit of paint, maybe a mixture roll it to mix the paint, and then brayer over the Yupo paper cutouts. That works fine with paint. But today I wanted to use alcohol ink- specifically Tim Holtz’s metallic alloys. You have to shake these and you will hear a ball bouncing around inside that mixes together the mica, or whatever the shiny stuff, is with the alcohol base. When I went to color the Yupo paper cutouts using a typical foam or felt
applicator, it tends to blot some of it off the Yupo paper because remember, this is very non-porous, very slick. So instead, I just apply it on directly on the die cut, following along the outlines, and I like the results better. The color is a bit denser, and you actually don’t use as much ink as you would think you would use. It tends to kind of follow along the edge and doesn’t really drip off as much as you might think. In part, I think, it’s due to the design of the bottle.
The alloys come in about 4 colors and look great on the Yupo paper!
I also wanted to mention that I’ve also used dimensional paints that come in applicator bottles. Again, they pretty easily follow along the edges. You get a little bit of dimensionality with the color and I’m thinking glitter glue, liquid pearls, any of that kind of those mediums in applicator bottles would probably work as well. You might have to play around with it to make sure it will stick to the Yupo paper.
So if you are looking for a paper that cuts more easily when you have small intricate designs, including words, give Yupo paper a try and then you can follow along with these ideas on how to color them!
Here are some examples of this technique:
Enjoy!
