Distress Oxide backgrounds

I finally got my set of Distress Oxide inks this last week...! They have been fun to play with, though I haven't given them a full test yet. I probably won't do a full review post on these because there are already plenty of good reviews out there, but I do like these, and look forward to using them more. :)

I needed a stack of thank you cards, so I started with a stack of fun backgrounds - most of these were done using a Wrinkle-Free Distress technique with the Distress Oxides, and others were done using a fun stencil technique that I'll be sharing in a couple of weeks.

I did test the Oxide inks with bleach and they happen to be very reactive, even after 2 days of drying time, so that was fun and very good to know. I filled up an inexpensive waterbrush with full strength bleach, and brushed it inside the outlines of my stamped images (these are from DoCrafts) to remove the ink and create some areas to color.

I stamped a thank you stamp (Unity Stamps) in the open area of the note pad, then used watercolors to color in the pencil and add some shadows. I made 7 cards altogether, and here are 2.

I'll share this stencil technique and a couple others on May 10th - it's very easy to do!

Have a wonderful week! I'll see you Wednesday with a new Splitcoast tutorial! :)

Splitcoast Tutorial: Spotlight Stamping

This week's tutorial over on Splitcoast is called Spotlight Stamping - this was a lot of fun and it's so easy with the MISTI.

I just got this fun set from DoCrafts- it's such a cute one and I love the separate office supply stamps (especially the pencil and crayon!). They're silicon stamps, but they stamped really nicely. Because I could stamp several stamps at once with the MISTI, I was able to do them in groupings and keep them in place on the lid to stamp the white panel and the background... and since there were quite a few steps, I decided to make 4 cards instead of just one.

In the tutorial, she uses a single stamp... to speed the process you could use a larger stamp or a background stamp. I love how the images look like they're floating in the white panel. They're watercolored with QoR paints. The little sentiment is from Taylored Expressions, and it's stamped on a Quickutz die cut tab.

Hope you'll try this one - it's a fun play on the old spotlight technique!