Alcohol Markers or Regular Markers

 I am making cards to send out with our new address, phone, etc. I tried both sets of markers to see which I liked best for this project. So I thought sharing the pros and cons would be interesting. I had separated the regular markers by color, and then put the alcohol markers together because I have fewer of those. The regular markers have the permanent, scroll and brush, brush and bullet ends, calligraphy, chisel and brush, and different colors of Sharpies. On the whole they have two ends. Quite a variety. The alcohol markers are just brush and broad (thick) ends. They are located in the bottom right corner.  The plastic holders I got from IKEA and they have hooks on the back.  They will hang on this item that looks like a towel holder.  That way I can have easy access to them, instead of digging through the box for the right color and type.

The Alcohol markers that I am using are Copic.  My main regular brush markers that I use and have the most of are Tombow.

Here I stamped 3 images and the top was colored in with the Copic Alcohol Marker.  The bottom two are done with the Tombow markers.  The Alcohol marker is smooth.  The colors are nice and bright and there are no lines. They are easy to blend. The Tombow markers are nice a bright also but do not blend and you can see where each stroke overlaps. With all three images I used a regular dye ink pad.  If you would use a permanent, fast drying ink pad the alcohol ink markers would make it smudge because they dissolve the permanent ink. 

Here is the back side of the three stamped images.  This is 80 lb card stock and the alcohol markers bled through the back.  This does not work well for this project because I am using them as post cards.  The regular markers did not bleed through, so those are the ones I will use.