Hello All! Today I am back with another take on using a stamp with water on top of Distress inks to lift off the inks. The first time I did this I just used regular white cardstock with Distress Oxide inks. Then I tried again using different papers like Kraft heavy stock and white heavy stock, and I really loved the white heavystock. And those videos are not edited or released because I am so far behind! But meanwhile I happened to catch a snippet of Tim Holtz using his Ideology colored Kraft cardstock, which I have to say I haven’t played around with a lot. I use it more for die cutting or backing things than to do anything on top of it. In his video he had stamped over some ink, but then he used water to color away some of the ink. Since I was playing with the stamping with water technique at the time, I immediately decided I had to try the technique on that colored Kraft cardstock.
In this video I inked with Distress Oxide ink in Unchartered Mariner on a piece of dark green colored Kraft cardstock, and used regular Distress ink on a lighter shade of green colored Kraft Cardstock. I just inked the cardstock with the ink pads, but also showed that you could use a brush to apply the ink (and you can certainly use the foam applicators too if you like). I did splash a few water droplets on top also.
I cut my cardstock longer than my stamp so that I could use the magnets in my stamp positioner to hold it down, and placed the cardstock down in the stamp platform and then aligned my stamp.
I used the Ranger Mister to spray the stamp with water (you could use whatever you have, but I find the Ranger Mister gives the best combination of enough water that is evenly sprayed across the stamp. If there is a lot of water around the stamp you can wipe that away. Then I bring the stamp onto the paper and let it sit for a few seconds. When the stamp is lifted, there is usually ink/water on the stamp so I wipe that away. Then I bring the stamp down again and lift it to pick up some of the water that is pooled on the cardstock. I do that until most of the heavy water is removed. In this video, I did use a heat gun to dry the cardstock for a few seconds, but generally I let the cardstock air dry. I feel like it gives a better look with the Distress Oxide inks.
You could leave the water puddles on the cardstock if you like, because the puddles do add a little bit of texture and interest, or you could try picking it up like I did in this video. I don’t use a rag to pick up the water on the cardstock because I don’t really want to move the water.
I made a second piece using Distress white heavystock with regular Distress ink in the same color- Unchartered Mariner. I followed the same process for stamping with water.
I also showed a sample I did with a different color Distress Oxide ink- Frayed Burlap- on the light green colored Kraft cardstock.
At the end of the video, I showed the results and also some examples of stamping with water using word stamps. These are trickier, and where I finally ended up was I would stamp with water and then I would usually re-stamp with either a similar color or a contrasting color. On the colored Kraft cardstock, if you stamp with water enough time, all the ink would be removed and you would be left with just the color of the original colored Kraft cardstock. But with other colors of cardstock it had less contrast (especially the plain cheap cardstock) so I chose to re-stamp.
I’ll be back with more follow up on this technique so stay tuned!
Enjoy
