Hi everyone! Today I’m back with Micaceous Iron Oxide paint and another twist with using it with Distress Oxide Sprays. I was not even going to film this, but my phone was sitting here while I was playing around, so I just started to film just in case. I was just wondering whether mixing in a Distress Oxide spray color other than brown into the Micaceous Oxide Ink and using that to go through a stencil and remove it to get a Tone on Tone look would work. I decided to use Uncharted Mariner because that’s what I had kicking around. I used a stencil I made myself from Yupo paper (2 or 3 pieces layered together). I call this one Grunge Chainlink and it has more open spaces than some of the other stencils I tried before that were super detailed. This design started out as a stamp years ago and it’s kind of a grungy, broken down type of look so it should work with this technique.
I made a little puddle of Micaceous Iron Oxide and added a couple of squirts of the Distress Oxide and painted a thin layer onto just cheap cardstock. I placed the stencil on top and then used a wipe to wipe away the paint. It didn’t look as blue as I had hoped- it was more of a faded blue. I did like it though.
I showed using a scrubby paint brush to get into more detailed areas of the stencil to remove a bit more paint.
When it was dry I compared it to another piece I did from my last attempt where I sprayed the Distress Oxide spray over the top of the paint. I feel like you could do this Tone on Tone look either way. You can mix the Distress Oxide into the Micaceous Iron Oxide and then paint the mixture onto the cardstock or paint the Micaceous Iron Oxide straight and then spray immediately. Either way, you can remove the paint mixture while it is still wet, and I feel like you’re going to get a cool look.
In the video I ran through a couple of other examples where I mixed other Distress Oxide spray colors into the Micaceous Iron Oxide paint. Old Olive was one color that really worked well- almost too well 😉. It seemed to overwhelm and take over when I mixed it with other colors. The nice thing about Micaceous Iron Oxide, is you can always come back over with an ink pad to touch up colors if you need to. The last example I showed was using a spray or two of regular Distress spray stain to darken and dull down a color that I thought was too bright.
So where did I land on this technique? I feel like I still like the mix and paint method best. It takes a step or two longer, but I like the way that the paint ends up a bit thinner, and I feel like, typically, the Distress Oxide hits the cardstock quicker and leaves more of the color behind. Not always though and as usual the serendipitous nature of these play sessions leaves me with some fun, even if they are a bit unexpected, results.
It’s up to you to decide which way you’d like to do this tone on tone look. It’s a tad quicker to paint, spray and then remove versus making the puddle, spraying, mixing and then painting. However, it’s really not that much of a difference in time. Try both ways. See which one you like better. Maybe you’ll come up with a completely different way of using Micaceous Iron Oxide with Distress Oxide together.
Enjoy!
