Distress Experiments

Oh my goodness, I love the new Tim Holtz Distress Oxides.
I was relatively restrained and only ordered three colours, just in case I wasn't impressed. Well, that wasn't going to happen was it!
They arrived last week so this afternoon I had a little play. There is no finished project here, I just wanted to share some of my experiments with you.

The three colours I have are Vintage Photo, Iced Spruce and Spiced Marmalade. All the trials are on white stamping card.

First up, here are two panels showing the difference between Distress ink on the left and Distress oxide on the right. The oxides are muted colours when you add water, the inks are more vibrant. The finish is matt, just as advertised.

This is a link to a video of Tim's demo at Creativation by ScrapTimeVideos :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p92g4Kfnbw

The second panel originally had a bit of iced spruce ink mopped up from a previous project and I added the oxides on top. The oxides are opaque so on top of the ink but there are some little patches of the dye ink showing through.

So, what are they like to stamp with? Here are some comparisons.

See the colour difference between the iced spruce panels, isn't it lovely. The leaves are stamped with the vintage photo, the colour is very similar but spritz water on them and the magic happens. The dye ink separates from the oxide but the image is still there as the pigment is left behind, just not so sharp. Add more water, more separation.

Finally, what does distress ink look like on top of the distress oxide? 

For the tag on the right, I used the three colours as in the first photo. I spread the oxides on the craft mat, spritzed with water, dried with the heat gun, added more, dried again and so on until I was happy with it.  Watch Tim's demo, the technique is exactly the same as using distress ink. 

I used spiced marmalade distress ink through one of the new stencils (Floral THS077). Doesn't that look good. All it needs now is a focal image and maybe some embellishment and I think that would be quite a nice tag. I'll think about that later.

The small tag on the left is just me cleaning up the stencil with a baby wipe, we don't want to waste that ink do we! I'll find some use for that later too.

I highly recommend these oxides, I had great fun this afternoon with my new toys.

Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge : February

Time to post my entry for the Craft Barn Twelve Month Challenge for February.

This month's verse is:
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again
and the challenge is to include a heart and cherub.

The heart and cherub were a bit of a challenge but I found a nice gothic cherub picture on the internet holding a heart. I think it matches my sombre, rainy lake scene. I have edged the verse with worn lipstick distress ink to tie in the colour of the heart.

Lake scene stamp from Stamp-It Australia : Luscious Landscapes stamped using watering can archival ink.
The background is iced spruce and weathered wood distress ink with water added to make it look a bit gloomy like a rainy day.