Distressed Flowers

my own background design 1 close up copy

I’ve just had another Tim Holtz Distress Oxide ink pad arrive in the post (fossilized amber)…….I seem to love everything Tim creates…if only I were rich or he lived close enough to marry…..although of course he may not be single…or straight?…..I decided to try the ink pad out.

I’m developing some sketches/designs from some flowers I photographed over the weekend. This is one of the backgrounds I came up with.

Firstly I laid a base of various layers of Distress Oxide (cracked pistachio, fossilized amber and wilted violet) by ‘smushing’ them …not sure if I like that word, sorry Tim, think you use that… onto a piece of acetate, spraying with water and then pressing the watercolour paper down on top. I thought it needed a hit of pink…oh no, I used another cliché…but ‘pop’ sounds worse….. but as I didn’t have any other colours of oxide, I just used a normal Distress Ink pad (picked raspberry).

I then traced my design over the top and used a paintbrush and water to take off some of the colour.

I’ll be interested to see what everyone else is doing with their Distress Oxides.

If you want to see another way I’ve used them, have a look at this post where I’ve used them in cards.

my own background design 1 copy

Distress Oxide Cards

happy birthday 2Soooo excited that some of my Distress Oxides have arrived. Sadly the ‘Twisted Citron’ I ordered will be a month late being delivered 😦 so I have to wait until the end of August!

craft haul

So I used ‘Wilted Violet’ and ‘Cracked Pistachio’ to make a couple of cards.

Step 1: I firstly went round the edge of each card, blending in a border of one of the Oxide colours with a small piece of Ranger Cut n Dry Foam (Wilted Violet for the chevrons card and Cracked Pistachio for the flower card.

Step 2: Next I laid over a stencil and sponged through one colour then the other. For the flower card, I used two different stencils. All designs came from stencils cut using Silhouette Cameo designs (I’ll see if I can find the names of the designers so I can credit them properly).

Step 3: With the stencil still in place, I tapped over a bit of dry pewter Pixie Powder.

Step 4: I sprayed lightly with water and removed the stencil.

Step 5: Then once it was dry,I flicked water droplets all over and after about 10 seconds Idabbed it off with kitchen roll.

Step 6: Then once it was dry I ran the other colour of Oxide around the very edges.

Step 7: I wanted to add words.

For the chevrons card, I tried using Crafter’s Companion foil and transfers, but it didn’t work and looked a mess. I had to rescue it by using a sparkly purple gel pen!

For the flowers one I used a rubber stamp, but it didn’t print perfectly, so I recruited the same sparkly pen!

Oh I need to get better at doing the writing on cards!

Step 8: I ummed and ahhed and decided to risk adding an accent of Nuvo Crystal Drops (Violet Galaxy) on the flower card. Luckily I didn’t mess it up!

happy birthday close up2

flower card 2

close up flower 2

I hope you like them. My aim was to stick to something simple for a change!

RFC

Crafter’s Companion 3D Embossing Folders

I went to a Craft Show this Weekend at the NEC in Birmingham.

I have wanted one of the 3D embossing folders since I saw them on Craft TV. I bought two and I’ve tried out one of them, the ‘Regency Swirls’ one.

3D embossing folder

I tried a few things.

Top left – rubbed over metallic gold Faber-Castell Metalic Gel Stick

Top right – embossed on green card and sanded down

Bottom right – a mix of 4 colours of Faber-Castell Metalic Gel Sticks

Bottom left – a mix of Faber-Castell Metalic Gel Stick and Distress Inks

I absolutely LOVE the embossing folder. It does make some areas of the card very thin, but I don’t mind that.

Has anyone else tried them out yet?