DT Special Assignment Day!

This week's tutorial is brought to you by Julie!

Let's get messy!!!

Working with inks can be intimidating to some scrappers. I'm going to go through some easy steps to hopefully help alleviate some of that intimidation.

Basic edge inking

Whatever style you use for your layouts, inking your edges can add depth to your papers. Lay your paper flat on either a craft mat or kraft paper. Use a sponge applicator (the ones with the wood handles are great and easy to use, but you can also use makeup application sponges as a less expensive option to start with.

Dab your sponge onto your ink pad to pick up colour. Starting on your mat use a circular motion moving onto your paper. Use a light touch to start. You can go over the area again for a deeper colour as desired. (I've gone quite dark in this image.)

Distress Basic Ink Edging

Follow the steps above using Distress Ink, then lightly mist the edges with water. The ink will bleed slightly. You can also "scrunch" the paper slightly to increase the distressed look.

Ink and Water Technique 1

Stamp an image on glossy paper. Let dry. Stamp Distress Ink onto your craft mat using 2-3 colours (try not to let them touch / mix). Lightly spray the ink with water (it will bead up). you can then do one of two things. Either lay the paper face down over the ink and use a rubber roller to spread the ink across the paper. (I couldn't find my rubber roller so I used a small tin can ). Or, roll the roller into the ink and roll over your paper. Dry the paper with your heat gun. Most papers will curl/roll up, but if you use the heat gun to dry them they will flatten back down. Using the sponge, ink the edges as noted above in the "Basic" instructions. You can add additional stamps or even repeat the wet ink process to achieve the desired effect.

Ink and Water Technique 2

Stamp Distress Ink onto your craft mat using 2-3 colours (try not to let them touch / mix). Lightly spray the ink with water (it will bead up). Drag your paper or tag through the ink to cover. You can do this multiple times, but be careful not to "muddy" your colours. Dry the paper with your heat gun. Using the sponge, ink the edges as noted above in the "Basic" instructions. You can add stamps or even repeat the wet ink process to achieve the desired effect.

 

There are a lot of "happy accidents" using inks. The colours and markings are never the same twice and you can produce some beautiful pieces to use on your layouts.

For this one, I thought the colours and pattern looked like a forest. I really didn't have a good tree stamp so I just used the one I had to illustrate stamping on top of the inked colours.

For this one, I scrunched up the tag first, then inked over the raised ridges. I lightly misted the tag with water and the ink ran into some of the crevices. When dry, I inked the edges. This look can be distressed even more to look like leather.

Have fun...get messy...and let's see how things turn out for you. (I love doing these techniques on tags as it is an inexpensive way to experiment and make some embellishments at the same time.)