Welcome back to the craft room and today’s First Time Using Distress Oxide Sprays Part 1 post. I have been a fan of the Distress Ink line by Tim Holtz for years. While I own quite a few of the regular Distress Ink colors in both the large and the mini ink pads, I have not ventured into the Distress Oxide line. Why not? A few reasons beginning with price and ending with storage space. I did however, purchase of few of the Distress Oxide Spray set from Michaels about a month ago. Join me for my first big adventure into using these beautiful sprays.
Distress Oxide Sprays
For those of you unfamiliar with the Distress Oxide line, let me tell you a little bit about them. The Oxides are a mix of both a pigment and a dye, giving them an interesting characteristic. Like all the items in the Distress line, they are water reactive. Adding water to these inks will enhance the chalky oxidized property, giving an interesting visual effect to the finished piece. However, the addition of the pigment ink makes them opaque. Because of the combination of the dye and pigment, the sprays need be shaken before every use. One advantage to the pigment in the oxide inks, is being able to use them on dark colored paper.
Because I had never used this product before, I wanted to get an idea of how to use it before starting a major project. As Tim Holtz always suggests, I created a swatch book. Starting with 140 lb watercolor card from Carson, I trimmed the pages down to 4” x 5.25”. I then used my Happy Planner disk punch to bind the pages. Using the disks gives me the option to add or remove pages as needed.
In all honesty, I am rather intimidated by this product, so it did take a few weeks before I was ready to give them a try. Deciding to just go for it, I began by cutting a handful of watercolor panels from two different types of watercolor card. I started 140lb Canson XL watercolor card as well as a pad of Canson Graduate 117lb watercolor card. With this lighter weight card, I will be die cutting different shapes from my backgrounds. I also found a package of Tim Holtz Watercolor Cardstock that has been in my stash for a few years. Let’s get started with today’s First Time Using Distress Oxide Sprays Part 1 adventure.
Pink and Purple Background
I began my crafty session with two beautiful colors, Wilted Violet and Picked Raspberry. Starting with a piece of Tim’s watercolor Cardstock I added a little bit of water with the Distress Sprayer. I then added a few sprays of each color before drying to piece with my Wagner heat tool on the low setting. One important thing I had to keep in mind for this and every project with distress products; wet on wet color blend and mix while wet on dry color layers. With that in mind I added a little but more color and finished with some water droplets.
The card on the left in the image below, is the finished background. Rather than waste the excess ink on my glass mat, I sprayed water onto the ink and collected as much as I could with a piece of the 140lb watercolor card. The resulting background is on the right.
Green Background
I plan on die cutting some leaves for a project, so my next background is with the 117lb card. I began by adding Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron with a little bit of Peeled Paint to a wet background. Again, I dried that layer with my heat gun before adding more ink. When I was happy with the background, I added a few light sprays of Wild Honey as well as a few more water droplets. Again, there was a lot of ink left on my glass mat, so I sprayed it with water and picked up the ink with another piece of 140lb card. Later in my crafting session I added a little bit of Wild Honey and Carved Pumpkin to this clean-up sheet.
Red Background
The next finished background isn’t really a favorite of mine. I used the only red colors I own, Fired Brick and Abandoned Coral on a piece of the 117lb card. I did try to add some larger water drops by spraying water into my hand and flicking them onto the paper. The first time it worked out ok. The second time, not so much! I ended up with a huge puddle of water. I was able to spread it out and add more color to the background, including drops of color directly from the bottle. It still didn’t improve the look, but I set it aside to dry. There wasn’t a lot of extra ink on the glass mat after this background, so this is the only background in this color. Speaking of color, I’m not sure why, but the image below looks a lot pinker than it should.
Bright Blue Background
My next background started on a piece of Tim’s watercolor card. This is probably my favorite one so far because of the bright blue colors. After spraying the background with a water, I added Salty Ocean, Mermaid Lagoon, and Peacock Feathers. Drying between each layer I added more color as well as water drops. This is such a bright and cheery background!
Yellow and Orange Background
The last background I had intended to create for this post is all about the yellows and oranges. This is another background I want to die cut, so it was back to the 117 lb card. I started the background by spraying it with water before adding Wild Honey and Mustard Seed. After drying it I brought out the silicone sheet that goes along with the Glass Mat to get another texture on the card. Inks will react differently on different surfaces. For instance, I wanted this layer to remain beaded up so I could pounce the paper into them. This can only be accomplished with a silicone surface. I added more of the Mustard Seed and Wild Honey to the mat as well as a little bit of Carved Pumpkin.
The background turned out great, until I dropped it into the ink, defeating the purpose of the smaller droplets of ink. That was OK though, I still like it. While I had the leftover ink on my silicone surface, I brought my green clean-up panel back in to add another layer of color and interest to that background panel.
Watercolor with Oxide Sprays
While researching techniques for today’s post, first time using distress oxide sprays part 1, I ran across the video Watercolor with Distress Oxide Sprays by Amy R with Prairie Paper Ink. She used the Distress Oxide Sprays for a watercolor technique, and I just had to give that a try! This experiment stated with the Wallpaper Art stamp set by AlteNew. I selected one of the flowers and a leaf bunch and heat embossed them onto a piece of the 117lb watercolor card. Following in Amy’s steps i chose to use Ranger white embossing powder for the images. I added a little bit of Wilted Violet and Peeled Paint Distress Oxide Sprays to the pallet on my glass mat and used a Royal & Langnickle round size 2 brush.
The fun and interesting thing about this technique is how each color, especially the green, looks like more than one shade of ink was used. Because of the mix of pigment and die inks, they do separate when left alone. As you can see in the image below, the laves are all different shades of green, a direct result of the separation of the different inks. No one will ever know that only one color, Peeled Paint, was used to paint this image.
You may also notice a rather large yellow blob on the corner of the page. I needed a yellow for the center of the flower, so I chose to use Mustard Seed. While trying to put the cap back on, I tilted the bottle a little bit too far and dumped ink all over the place! Thankfully the floral image was not affected. I will, however, need to either fussy cut the flower, or go back in with more of the yellow ink and add it around the entire image before die cutting it out. This will change the original idea I had for the card, but I will make it work!
More Distress Oxide Spray Backgrounds
After cleaning up that mess, I decided to make a few more backgrounds. I neglected to turn the camera back on to record it, nor did I write down the inks colors that I used. Either way, they all turned out beautifully.
Thank you so much for joining me for today’s First Time Using Distress Oxide Sprays Part 1. I now have so many beautiful backgrounds to work with! A few of them are already set aside for certain cards, but most of them are not. Have you used Distress Oxide Sprays before? If you have, please drop all your tips and tricks in the comments below. I need all the help I can get!! Don’t forget to come back and join me for part 2 where I turn some of them beauties into cards. Until then, have a fantastic week and I will see you back in the craft room again soon!
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