Distress Inks and Embossing

Lucky me - my lovely friend Katherine and I had a Play day yesterday. These are what I made.The velvet samples are embossed velvet using the techniques shared by Jacinta Leishman on her blog in this post. We followed her instructions and created some lovely samples.

The only thing we found that differed from her advice was that we tried indian woodblocks with great success! (see the spirally one above) A fabulous technique to try again - click here for her follow-up post where she shares her BEAUTIFUL embossed velvet book.

For the rest of the day, we were exploring some of the techniques from this book by Tim Holtz.Distress Ink Pads are a Ranger product - more info here - they are lovely to work with since they blend really well, and stay wet a bit longer so you can create interesting effects. The colours are also very yummy. First experiment was water stamping - basically you ink the card, put an embossing stamp pad onto a stamp and then mist it with water. Once you stamp it on the inked background you dry it with a heat gun and the image fades like bleach. I should note here that I used watercolour paper which meant the ink didn't blend as well. Katherine's background is much more subtle, and I learned that lesson and used smoother paper for the rest of the experiments.Next was inking the paper followed by stamping an image with Embossing ink and applying clear embossing powder. Once this was heated and cooled, we re-inked over the top with a different colour. Then ironed it with newsprint so it stopped being shiny. Mine turned out really well because there was good contrast between my first and second ink colours. It is yummy in person.We tried applying acrylic paint to a stamp next, and then inked over so that acted as a resist. Didn't really think that was anything different from similar 'resist' techniques we've tried, but a good reminder of a nice effect.

Using Distress Embossing Powder was the last technique. You stamp the image with embossing ink, and then use the Distress Embossing Powder as usual, followed by inking with the Distress Ink. These turned out fabulously.

I wondered what the difference really was between distress embossing powder and others, and did a test with some silver....I really like the distress embossing powder because it is not shiny. Nice to have different options for different effects.

If you like these techniques, also click here to get to the Tutorials on the Ranger site for making cards - some of the projects there use distress inks and embossing powders.

Have fun :-)