Ink Stained Tiles for our Kitchen Backsplash!

I found this AMAZING blog post through the magic of Pinterest, and I am SO SO glad that I did!  It was SO much fun and I couldn't be happier with the end product!

When I saw these on Pinterest, I fell totally, instantly in love.  I knew I had to have these for my kitchen!  I'm hoping that it works out to use them in there, that the colors will match up nicely with the living room colors, but if not, they will go in my bathroom.  I just LOVE how they turned out!

We bought the inks at Hobby Lobby and the tiles at Lowes for practicing.  There is a Habitat for Humanity used  housing store here in town that I just found out about after living here for over a decade... and they sell boxes of tiles for SUPER cheap, so we will get the bulk of our tiles from there for less than ten cents a piece.

You need inks, a toothbrush and Alcohol blending solution that you can purchase at your local hobby/craft store, or online here.

First coat the tile with the alcohol blending solution.  You don't want puddles, but you have to give it a good coat and work fast because the stuff evaporates quickly!

Then, you just put drops of color and watch it explode into amazingly cool patterns.


We experimented a little with using other things like q-tips and whatnot, but really we just liked the basic patterns it created all by themselves.

The best part of this is that you can't "fail" at it!  If you end up with a pattern you don't like, just use the alcohol blending solution to wipe it off and start over again!

You can also put small drops of the blending solution on the colors and it will leave "white" spots.  You can wait til that dries and just keep adding layers.  There are some awesome effects!

 My husband made on that looks almost tie dyed, its pretty awesome, too!

I finally found the best way to clear coat them to protect them from scratching on the blog with Aimee's Comment.  It sounds like it will be a bit time consuming, but I'm thinking that on a hot summer day in the garage, it will go fast enough. (With some good ventilation, of course!)

So, what do you think?  Looks fun, eh?  I LOVE them and can't wait until I get to use them!


ETA:  I actually changed my mind about these colors.  I am going to use these in my bathroom or something.  I used more berry colors for my kitchen: