DOUBLE WATERCOLOUR IMAGES WITH DISTRESS INKSDist

Under-colouring with distress inks.

This is a super-easy way to add colour to a stamped image, although its one of those techniques that people either love......or don't.  I'm in the former category,, and use this a bit, especially with some of my more solid stamps, such as these ones from Darkroom Door.

You just wet a piece of thickish (ideally water colour) paper, ink up your stamp with distress inks and stamp them down onto the wet page,  Leave them there for a little while so that the colours soak and spread.

Dry the page (either with a craft heat gun) or leave it to dry naturally, then re-ink your stamp with black ink (I used Versafine), and stamp on top of the blurry coloured image to add back the detail.

That's pretty much it!

TEA THEMED CARD.

I used a cut-out card from Regal Craft Cards to make this card, which I won't be giving to other because it didn't quite work out the way I wanted, for a variety of reasons.  Still, one always learns at least as much from mistakes as success, so lets have a look at what went right and what didn't.

The success was the mottled background paper.  I had some large leafed loose vanilla tea, which I enjoyed as a cuppa, and then spread the leaves over a piece of plain white card, leaving it overnight to dry.  The leaves died the card this great mottled brown but also gave it a lovely vanilla scent that lasted for a couple of months!

The issues arose with the teacup.  I stamped it on thick cardboard with a dye ink, and then heat embossed it with three layers of ultra thick clear embossing powder.  This is where it all went astray.  Firstly, the Versamark and molten embossing powder caused the stamped writing to run just a little.  This wasn't too bad in this context but could cause problems if a crisp image was important.  Next time I will try heat set pigment ink and if this doesn't work, Staz-On.

The next problem was the embossing, even although the cardboard was quite thick, it wasn't thick enough for the layers of embossing powder and the heating involved and it curled quite badly.  Again, as I wanted to crack the powder it didn't matter too much, and I could straighten it out however it wasn't ideal, and next time I'll die cut two or three thick cups and glue them together to make an ultra-thick base.

Lastly, I wanted to crack the embossing powder and ink over it with sepia ink .  I tried to do this by bending the teacup shape backwards and forwards with the results that some pieces came parially off the page, whilst others absolutely refused to break!  When I inked it, instead of sitting in subtle cracks the ink leaked under the broken edges and ended up making the whole thing look a bit more smudgy than cracked.  So......next time I might try the freezer method, and a thicker ink (I used distress ink).

Next time might be a while though......I'll have to work up to it!  On the bright side, I do love the little teacup and tea bag dies from Paper Roses, and I'll definitely put them to good use on other projects.

DISTRESS INK EMBOSSING

DISTRESS INK EMBOSSING

I was going to put this little example in the bin about three times but something stopped me.

It was created by swooshing a few different colours of distress ink, straight from the cubes onto the plastic surface of an embossing folder,( whilst talking to a room full of people, although that bit is optional)  then running it through the Cuttlebug.

Distress inks are very watery . (They are supposed to be), this means that they tend to bead on plastic and smoosh together more than a lot of other inks, when this technique is used.

I kind of like the random nature of the result.  If I was doing it again with a bit more thought I'd choose colours closer on the colour wheel (perhaps yellow-orange-red) and maybe even add a little spray of water to encourage the inks to spread a little bit more.

There's a l lot of potential to play here and, for those who stress about such things, the ink came straight off the embossing folder with a baby wipe!!

DISTRESS INK AND ACRYLIC BLOCK BACKGROUNDS

DISTRESS INK & ACRYLIC BLOCK BACKGROUND

As you can probably tell by now, I've just bought myself some new Distress Ink sets. I've been reading about inking backgrounds using a craft mat and wondered, given I usually worked on a small scale, whether or not an acrylic block would work.  It does!
Just blob a colour or two of distress ink straight from the pad onto a large acrylic block, spritz it with water until the colours start to run together and blend then either turn it over and "stamp" onto your paper/card, or alternatively, put the paper onto the block.  If you do the latter you can smooth it over with your hand which helps the colours to blend.

CLOSE UP

BACKGROUND FROM CRUMPLED PAPER AND DISTRESS INKS

INKED CRUMPLED PAPER

DISTRESS INKS + CRUMPLED PAPER

 I was playing around with distress ink pads (easy to do now that they come in little cubes) when it occurred to me that I hadn't yet put the "classic" inked background on the blog.  I can't pretend that I haven't tried this a time or ten before but still......
Crumple up some thickish paper (thin is OK but it tears easily), unfold it without straightening it completely, wet it well, then just rub a bit of distress ink here and there.  I haven't gone overboard in these examples, so the ink has just caught the top of the folds..  When the paper is dry, flatten it more.  You can use it "as is" or carefully iron it with a coolish iron.  (Make sure the steam is switched off!). Any water-based ink will work, but distress inks are nice and runny to start with and are consequently easy to use for this technique