Wrinkle Free Distress Tutorial

 A friend of mine asked me how I make my distress ink backgrounds
so I decided to do a blog post on it.

I learned from Tim Holtz' "wrinkle free distress" technique
described here and here.

I used distress inkpads festive berries, mowed lawn, scattered straw.

Later I substituted fossilized amber for the scattered straw.
Choose colors you like!

 

Place inkpad directly craft sheet.

Smudge and squish it a little to get the color transferred to the craft sheet.

You can see green and red but it's hard to see the yellow.

Spritz with water.

I used an old hairspray bottle with a fine mist

so I had to spritz several times.

Place paper on the wet ink.
I use Georgia Pacific 110 lb. index cardstock.
I turn the paper a  bit to "collect" the colors.
This is the fun part. You can experiment however you wish.

 I wanted to add more color, so I went back to the craft sheet 

and dipped the edges into the color.

 After finishing that first piece of  paper,

I added fossilized amber distress ink to craft sheet

and spritzed with water.

My second piece of paper had more dilute green and red.

The amber is bright because it's first generation here.

 

Adding more festive berries and fossilized amber ink to the craft sheet

and spritzing with water.

Results of placing paper onto craft sheet.

Results after dipping the paper into colors a second time.
If you don't like results clean the craft sheet and start again.

Here are my 3 backgrounds waiting to dry.

You are supposed to dry between the applications of ink color

to prevent colors from getting muddy.

I'm always in a hurry and I just dab the paper back into the wet ink

when I want to add color to the white spaces.

I tend to make several 4 x 5.25 inch pieces of paper.

They are very nice to keep on hand for a quick card.

After paper is dry, I sometimes iron it to flatten it.

Before adding to a card, I sometimes sponge distress ink on the edges

and/or even on white areas in the middle.

Made this card by sponging mowed lawn then tea dye distress inks on the edges of the background.

Used a Dina Wakley Scribbly Bird with Versafine black onyx ink

to make a belated birthday card.

Thanks for visiting!