Distress Inks

Back in March (!), I signed up for Tim Holtz' Creative Chemistry 101 on-line course.  Today I actually started doing the course.  My sister, my five year old son, and I watched the first two lessons and then tried our hand at creating some backgrounds with distress inks.  Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of colors to choose from (yet).  We had moss green, antique linen, and wild honey. 

The first technique involves rubbing distress inks onto a tag using an applicator and then flicking water on it to make splotches.

 

In the second technique, a stamp was inked with distress inks and then spritzed with water before stamping to get a watercolor effect.

The third technique (and our favorite) was to apply the ink directly to a craft sheet, spritz with water, and then press the tag onto it.  You can keep adding layers with whatever ink is left on the sheet.  We also cheated and added in some drops of distress stain to get some other colors involved.

My son's tag was the best one of all:

 

Here's another one I did:

 Here's a final comparison.


If you get a chance, this class is definitely worth it!