Distress Ink Mini Tutorial

Hi everyone Danielle, here with a little

mini

tutorial

on

distress

ed inks. I mentioned fade inks in the first video when we were talking about different types of D inks and I showed you these and I just wanted to go ahead and tell you a few. Of the really cool techniques that you can use, you can certainly use them for your regular stamping, but as I mentioned in the first video, you're not really going to get a clean, crisp, uniform image if you stamp with this thing that I showed you. This little swatch I made where I did the

distress

inks and then a regular hero shadow ink and the distress inks definitely have a patchy, splotchy look to them, which is fine if you're going for the distress look and I use that. from time to time for this, um, but keep in mind that you won't get a uniform stamp with worn inks.

Instead, what I like to use for um are other techniques that are really cool and I'm just going to show you two or three in this short video so you can get an idea. The first thing you'll need is one of these craft sheets and it's non-porous, very slippery, so it won't absorb any color that you can. put glue on this, you can etch it, you can stain it with ink and it's really nice because it just wipes right off. I definitely wouldn't recommend using this ink mix as I'm about to show you in your dining room. table because it could certainly stain the wood, especially if it's not finished, so you'll definitely want to pick up one of these craft sheets or some people I know use baking sheets like a silicone baking sheet.

The same idea is green and purple. my favorite colors so these are my two favorite greens weathered shutter and peeling paint and I'm going to take this simple white cardstock and I'm going to show you how you can transform it into something different and so one. of the other tools that you might want to have on hand is one of these foam mixing tools, it's a little wooden block with a handle on the bottom, it has this velcro on it and it will come with these little foam applicators that you just stick on. At the bottom I have foam applicators for pretty much every color, because obviously I wouldn't want to use this green and then dip it in red, because that wouldn't look good, but they're very inexpensive to buy and you can use them. over and over again, so one of my recommendations when using this foam blending tool is to definitely start working on the outside of your paper, like on your craft sheet, and then gently pull the color in. the color on your paper because if you were to take this blending tool and just go straight to your paper, you would get a print of the foam and that's not really the look we're going for, so you're going to take your foam and you're just going to stamp it. like you would with a stamp on your ink pad and it's going to pick up the ink and I'm going to start with the lighter shade of the two and like I said before, it's really important not to go straight to the paper because you're going to get a lot of ink, smudges and prints and will not be as smooth as if you started on your craft sheet and then gently applied the color to the paper. and it takes a little practice, just getting the right touch and mastering it, but it's very easy to use, so I'll start.

I'm going to move this forward quickly so you can um nice. To see how it works, it takes a little time, not much, and the good thing is that you can make it as dark or as light as you want. Obviously you can apply more less color, you can make it really look. distressed or give it a more uniform look and you can mix different shades of the same color like I'm going to do in this video or you can always mix different colors like greens and blues or green and purple which is really cool. your options are practically endless, so those were the weathered shutters and I'm going to go ahead and do the exact same thing with the darker shade of the chipped paint and I'm just going to keep this color more confined to the outside. of the paper so the same idea is to just start working around the edge just to really bring out the lighter color towards the center of the paper and make the edges a little bit darker and stand out more so I'm pretty happy with the result.

I could leave it at that, but I'll actually show you a little bit more, but before I continue with one of my tips, I learned the hard way that you're going to get ink on your fingers when you do this and So if you're going to move on to touching a piece of cardstock white, you'll definitely want to clean your hands, so a baby wipe like I use or just a wet paper towel comes off very easily, so make sure you clean your hands before you start doing anything else, so So now that my hands are clean and dry, I'm going to go ahead and show you some of the fun things you can do with these distressers.

They were designed to react very well. with water and then I have this giant

mini

mister. I guess he's not really a mini Lord. uh it's just a sir, but you can take it and you can spray water directly onto this piece of cardstock that we just created and I just did a little bit. I sprayed, but you can see especially towards the right side, which is almost off camera, some little spots from where I sprayed the water, so if you wanted a really subtle effect with the water droplets, you could do that. a light mist or you can put your fingers on it and move it around, but what I want to show you is just using a little bit of water and this little panel of cardstock that we just colored green, what you can do, so I'm going to take this background stamp really cool zigzag from heroarts and I'm actually going to take some water from my mini lord and I'm going to stamp my stamp in the water and then stamp it on the cardstock so just spraying some water on my craft sheet.

I'm going to take my stamp and just stamp it directly into the water until I get it, you know, a relatively even Rel coverage with water, it's a little difficult to get the water to stick to your stamps and I'm going to dry it because I don't want to soak completely that piece of cardstock and then I'm going to bring in the cardstock and I'm just going to stamp my wet stamp right on this. piece of green paper, um, green, I'm going to push down and sorry for my head there, uh, when I pull it out, the result will be very faint, but you can see it, you can see the zigzag pattern just barely. um especially in the areas where it's a little bit darker, but it's like magic when I take my heat gun because I'm going to start drying it, this speeds up the drying process and as it dries, you can actually see that the pattern begins to emerge.

And I think it's really cool and all it took was a little bit of water to get that effect, so imagine the possibilities are really endless when it comes to using these distressing and playing with them with water and like I said before, You can obviously, just use this piece of paper as is as a background for your card, as a mat, you can stamp a piece of paper and do whatever you want with it, so I'm going to leave that aside because I'm going to use it as a card. for this week. Another caveat is that after you mix the foam, make sure you go ahead and clean the craft mat really well because there will obviously be some residual ink on it and it's really a shame when you go ahead and put down a piece of white cardstock or another piece um, if you start working with other colors and contaminate your project, so the next thing I did was stamp this really pretty flower from Fon Judy's flower lawn. and I'm going to do more or less the same.

I'm just going to show you how you can use the distress inks to color your images, so if you don't have markers or you're not a fan of markers or colored pencils, you can even use your distress inks to color your stamped images, so I went ahead and stamped this and I'm going to use three different shades of purple just to get some shading and shadows, you know, and I. I've roughly cut it out, you can see I still need to go around the edges and I'm going to do the same thing with the purple ones that I did with the green ones and my foam blending tool.

I'm going to go ahead around the edges and start working with the colors starting from the lightest to the darkest and just like with the green, I'm going to keep the darker tones confined to just the edges of this flower and leave them a little . lighter on the inside like a kind of highlight, like the light hits it right in the center of the flower and that's it and what I actually did was stamp another one and I'm going to do the same thing, color it. with the purple and I'm just going to cut out a part and paper cut it to give the flower a layered look which is really pretty so I think the purple with this green will look really nice for the card I'm going to make for this week, so I hope you were able to learn something about heartbreak.

I'm going to make some videos in the future to show you the other million techniques you can do with it, but if you've never used stress, well I suggest you at least get an ink pad and one of the foam blending tools and Try it because the possibilities are truly endless. I don't know how people don't use stress on me. It's on almost every card because there are so many cool things you can do with it and it comes in so many beautiful colors so if you have any questions let me know and I'll see you next week bye.