Hi everyone, Rebecca with you today coming at my blog from a slightly different angle! Papermaze stock so many amazing mixed media products that I thought it would be a good idea to show how you can use some of them. In this blog, I will focus on Distress Oxide Ink Pads.
Distress Inks vs. Distress Oxides
Most colours/shades are available in both ink format and oxide format. Which one you use will depend on the effect you want on your page! Distress Inks are thinner, water-based dye inks. They dry really quickly and I find they give you a much more vivid colour. Distress Oxides are thicker, creamier and almost chalky. They are a mix of dye and pigment inks and react really well with water - they do however, take slightly longer to dry. I find if you are trying to blend colours on a page using a blending brush, oxides blend much more naturally and look less 'patchy' as they seem to spread more evenly.
Here is the colour 'Mermaid Lagoon' in both Distress Oxide (left) and Distress Ink (right). I have applied both of these dry - meaning I've just used a blending tool to add the colour to white cardstock without adding any water. You can see how much thicker and creamier the oxide looks.
When I first started dabbling in mixed media, I made the decision to get Distress Inks instead of oxides as I preferred the more vivid colour. However, I quickly discovered that I wanted oxides as well and now I'm building a stash of those too! Both do give very different effects and whereas I prefer to use my Distress Inks for 'wet' mixed media, I prefer to use Distress Oxides for 'dry' mixed media. So in short - I think everybody needs both!!
I recently bought a few papers from Vicki Boutin's Fernwood collection and I've been desperate to use the paper with the coloured hexagons on it. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to add some dry mixed media to my background using Distress Oxide Ink Pads. I managed to match the Ink Pads to the colours in the Hexagons really well. I used the following Distress Oxides - Barn Door, Rustic Wilderness, Broken China, Mermaid Lagoon, Chipped Sapphire, Ripe Persimmon and Picked Raspberry.
One of the best investments I've made recently was a set of blending brushes with white heads and coloured handles. It means I can dedicate one brush to each ink pad and therefore keeping them 'clean'. The white bristles mean I won't get them mixed up and dunk the wrong one in the wrong ink pad! These brushes are similar to the foam pads and domed pads you can buy, but I prefer them as they give me more control and I feel like I can apply more even pressure.
For this layout, I cut out the hexagons from the patterned paper, distressed the edges and arranged them on my page. I then drew around them and matched my Distress Oxides to the hexagons. Using my blending brushes in a circular motion, I added some colour to my background making sure to add the right colour in the right place. I generally start my inking in an area I know is going to be covered by my photo, patterned paper or embellishments etc so that I can get the pressure right, and then I spread the colour out to the area where it will be visible on my layout. I start off by pressing quite lightly and then I can build the colour up. It's possible to increase the intensity of the colour, but once it's on the page you can't take it away! You'll see from the photo below, the finished mixed media looks like a total random mess on my page - and this is often the case with mixed media. Once I start building my layout on top of it though, it will look a lot better!
Once all my colour was in place, I took a paintbrush and some water and added water splatters all over the oxides. This is where the magic happens with oxides! Water lifts the colour and creates a really cool effect in the ink. This doesn't really happen as well with Distress Inks - I've read that it's because the dye in the Distress Inks doesn't oxidise. You can see below the different effects adding water splatters has on Distress Inks vs Distress Oxides.
I paused my mixed-media here and stuck all of my hexagons in place, and embellished with some Fernwood Icon Ephemera. I also fussy-cut some of the butterflies and dragonflies from the Speciality Vellum and stuck them onto some of the hexagons.
I finished off my layout by adding some splatters to the page. Splatters are one of my favourite ways to complete a layout. They are the perfect finishing touch, and a great way to add some subtle wet mixed media to a page without going mad!
I used my Distress Oxides to add some coloured splatters tone-on-tone to the areas around my hexagons. This is really simple to do - just stamp the ink pad onto some plastic packaging or a glass mat, and spritz a bit of water on. Then mix it up with a paintbrush and splatter away! The smaller the paintbrush, the finer the splatters will be.
I then added more splatters - you can never have too many splatters! Firstly, I added some white splatters. For this, I like to use watered-down white gesso. I find that gesso works better than white acrylic paint as it doesn't soak into the background or patterned papers. It sits on the surface and dries, therefore staying more white. I try not to water it down too much as the thicker it is, the larger the splatters will be. And finally, I added gold splatters. Gold seemed like the obvious choice because there is gold foiling on the speciality vellum. For gold, I always reach for my metallic gold acrylic paint because it's nice and thick and leaves nice big splatters. I love the way that the white and gold splatters finish this layout off and give it a more 'rustic' or 'weathered' look.
I hope you've enjoyed this layout and found the blog helpful. I love mixed media, and if I can give one piece of advice to anybody who wants to dip their toes in but may be a little nervous, it would be GO FOR IT! It's great fun, and you have a lot more control with dry mixed media so it's not so scary! It's just cardstock, so have a play!
I'll be back layer in the month when I'll be getting a bit messier with some 'wet' mixed media using Shimmerz products.
Take care,
Rebecca x
@preciouspagespapercraft
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