BOO!

... yes BOO!  just grabbing your attention as its been a while since I blogged - once a month for the past few months really is not good enough is it!. Life, work and 'stuff' got in the way.. but I'm back with a new determination to do better! (well lets be honest - I can't do much worse can I!)

aaaanyhoo

let get things started...

At the beginning of August I demo'd at Birds in the Barn near Colchester in Essex (lovely shop in the grounds of an equally nice garden centre - worth a trip) and in the morning I was using the fabulous Distress Oxide inks.... if you don't have any of these yet you need to get yourself down to your nearest craft shop and get some - you won't regret it...

Here are some of the samples.... look at the prettiness - the opaqueness of these inks...  and that's the main difference I think between the Oxides and original Distress Inks....

and because they're opaque you can build up layers of colour - the samples below illustrate that... add a colour, dry, add another colour:

Water will affect the Oxide inks in the same way as the originals.  The sample top right in the photo below shows a blended background where I spritzed a stamp with water and pressed it onto the surface - this removes the ink (left hand panel) and on the panel on the right I over stamped using the Distress Oxide (oh yes, you can stamp with them as normal)

The sample on the bottom left of the above photo is where I've added Broken China ink to a kraft panel (using a blending tool), dried that layer and then overstamped with the image using the same colour ink.

The kraft panel sample below was created by pressing ink onto craft sheet, spritzing with water and then laying the kraft panel onto the ink - this was Peeled Paint ink - look how the Oxide has drawn out the blue that goes into making up the green colour - love how different colours are drawn out.

The other sample above was created with lots of layers of Distress Oxide, water splashes and stamping with the Oxides. I stamped on numbers (using black Archival) and they seem to 'hover' on the surface don't they?! as if there is a layer of acetate between the oxides and the archival... interesting.  I painted the right had set of numbers with water to lift some off the colour.

When I get inks or paints I like to create a sample swatch of each for reference and with the Oxides I splashed each one with water to see how water affected the Oxide side of the inks....  The most interesting of these was Frayed Burlap - it was a surprising result when splashed with water and dried - so much so that I repeated it with a second tag. The first tag is on top on right, second tag on left underneath.  Look how different the effect is!  I think this is one of the interesting things about the inks. (note: the ink was applied by rubbing the ink pad over the tag so the ink is quite saturated/intense).

Here's a card I made using one colour of ink - Walnut Stain, bit of a favourite of mine.  Blended the background, splashed with water. Dried the ink. Stamped with same colour (seedhead from JOFY38, another favourite). Dried. Then spritzed the stamp with Perfect Pearl Mists in Heirloom Gold - this removed the ink and left a lovely sparkly image that catches the light (photo on right)... a little bit lush isn't it!

But it isn't only backgrounds and stamping you can do with the inks - I am loving how you can water colour paint with them as I've done on the sample below... (image is from JOFY53)

I hope these simple samples inspire you to try the inks - they really are worth it (but please don't blame me when you realise you NEED the entire set).

x