Hi! I still have another post or two on leather embossing, but while I was working on a card I grabbed a Tone on Tone background that I (for a moment) forgot how I made it 😉 . I started this blog for my friends, students in my classes, and my Mom to remind them how I did certain techniques. But as the years have gone by, and I’ve now tried so many different things, I sometimes forget exactly what I did! So I continue to film and post for me too, haha!! When I found the video I decided to interrupt my leather series and post this 🙂 .
Today I have another idea of something to try with Distress Oxide Sprays. And I’m going to try two different things:
First I sprayed Distress Oxide Spray in the color Pine Needles on 2 pieces of cardstock to create backgrounds.
For experiment number 1, I took a stamp and I spritzed it with water. I stamped onto the Distress Oxide background to see if just the water on a stamp would oxidize that ink. I wiped off the stamp in case there was any ink transfer and tried it again to fill in the rest of the background. What I am attempting to see is if I can get a tone on tone look with just water. Experiment number 1 seemed to work and it is definitely a Take Five. One side was a little bit lighter, so I probably could’ve used a little bit more water.
While that piece was set off to dry I worked on experiment number 2. I only had one other piece of paper, but I had two thoughts for this experiment so I decided
to see if I can do half on one side and half on the other. I wanted to try using ink or spray on the stamp and I decided to use spray because it was wetter.
I spritzed my background stamp with Distress Spray Stain in the same color as the background Distress Oxide (Pine Needle) and when I stamped it, the background ink started to oxidize. I wanted to see if this was going to oxidize or not. And it did! Okay, cool!
The next thing I wanted to try was spraying water though a stencil, again to see if I would get that tone on tone look. So I placed the stencil over the second half of the background paper and sprayed water through it. Rather than using a Distress Spray Stain color like I normally do in the Distress Oxide resist, I just spritzed through the stencil with water. Again, to see if I get that tone on tone look. On this piece I was left with was a tone on tone look with just the water, and a little bit of a darker tone on tone look using the Distress Spray Stain. So here is yet another way that you can utilize these Spray Stains for quick backgrounds. These are probably not going to be a focal point, but with things on top it makes a nice, pretty interesting background rather than just plain cardstock.
After the pieces were dried I showed the results of these tests. And one of the conclusions I came to- and I had my suspicions before but this clinched it for me- was not to dry these Distress Oxide Resist pieces with a heat gun. One of the pieces I dried immediately with the heat tool, and I don’t know whether it stops the oxidation or makes it blotchier, but it’s it’s a little harder to see the stamped or stenciled images. With one of the stenciled pieces I started drying it with the heat gun and it was starting to fade out. There wasn’t as much contrast. So I lined the stencil back up and sprayed one more time with water and then let it air dry. And I feel like the air drying works better with the Distress Oxide resists.
The piece that I stamped with water on and then let only air dry had more definition/contrast. Maybe the slower oxidation? Maybe more water soaks in and does its thing before it evaporates off? I’m not entirely sure why the air drying works better, but I like the look much more than when I dry it with a heat tool.
These projects are quick Take Fives to make nice, soft, pretty tone on tone backgrounds for your projects, but from now on I will have patience and set them aside to dry 🙂 .
Enjoy!
