RangerDylusions London Ink Spray, Blue

This review is for the "Black Marble" variety of the Dylusions range of spray-inks by Dyan Reaveley for Ranger Inc. I've given it 4/5 stars for reasons I'll state below but I would give the rest of the range 5/5 - this one colour just wasn't quite so good.Dyan designed these inks - which are all dye inks in that they stain the paper itself and soak in - there is one pigment ink in the range (White Linen) that of course sits on top of the paper and has different properties - mostly for the art-journalling market and they're optimised for use in her own Dylusions journals (several are now made,  Dylusions Large Journal  and  Dylusions Small Journal, Multi-Colour  and  Dylusions Square Journal ) and the paper therein, which accepts these inks the way they are intended. I don't do art journalling, but I did want to try these products out so I bought a few colours to give them a go. I tested them out in a  Daler and Rowney Graduate A4 Sketchbook , which I know has different paper but it works well with inks as a rule and there's no "bleed" onto the next page, so I figured it would work reasonably well. I tested this ink on its own sprayed onto the page and with another colour in the Dylusions line and with Tim Holtz's  Distress Spray Stain, Picked Raspberry  also from Ranger. I also tried filling a  Pentel Aquash Water Brush Pen  with the ink as Dyan does that in some of her videos.I found this black ink worked really well sprayed through a stencil and gave a fast-drying intense black colour. Like the Distress products, this ink contains a retarder so you can release it from the paper again by adding water using a mister, a stamp, stencil or damp cloth etc - that worked well and left a much lighter grey. When sprayed directly onto the page alone or alongside other colours then blotted onto the opposite page before blotting with kitchen roll per Dyan's multitude of techniques videos on YouTube, I was a bit disappointed - the Black Marble ink turned a pale grey, but the other colours in the range like Jade and London Blue didn't do that - they held their colour really well. That's the only negative I can honestly say re: this one colour alone.When applied using a water brush pen, the colour was very intense and if anything a bit too fluid for the pen - water works fine but this ink seemed to want to drip from the brush like the surfactants (etc) within it were making it flow too well. I've seen it used with the  Ranger Tim Holtz Water Brush  so perhaps that brand might given different results.On the whole it's a lovely intense ink spray that works well with stencils and left to dry but blotting seems to remove so much dye that it comes through a deep grey instead. Grey's fine if you want grey, but I wanted black.

Great stuff

this is a great product to have in your art kit, easy to use, you can spray a lot or just a little, you can water it down on the canvas and blend it in or use it as pops of colour, I have used these on canvas, al types of paper and they work really well.

fantastic, colour amazing.

Mesmerising still lol i was little shocked at how dark this teal one is but if add water to you project 1st it will dilure a little bur still amazing pigment payout

Extremely pigmented ink in a handy spray bottle, very good quality and mixable with other inks

Love these colours. Had an issue with the forst one that was sent and the replaced it free of charge and delievered the next day. Work well as a spray and with a stensils.

What a fantastic product, I love it so much I've rushed to order lots of other colours. For me, it's one of those products which I will use over and over and in many ways. Just wish I'd found this yonks ago. Highly recommend to all arty types.