Distress Ink Stamp and Smoosh Technique

Circular Stamping Technique

With the background completed, I die cut it using this beautiful Diagonal Stitched Rectangles die from Pinkfresh Studio. I then layered on a die cut butterfly created using the Tim Holtz Butterflies Thinlits. For the sentiment I used the same technique with the paper and double sided foam adhesive with a word die from the Pinkfresh Studio Exclusive Thin Words Everyday Script Dies.

Wreath Stamping Technique
Tone on Tone Background Technique

On this 4th and final card, I used the Spring Sprig Stamps in two ways. I created a wreath and a tone on tone background. To make the wreath, I choose three stamps to use and I trimmed a piece of cardstock to a square. I then placed my stamp near the top of my paper and used my stamp positioning tool to stamp the image. I then rotated the paper a quarter turn and stamped the image again. This way the square paper is important. As you turn the paper, the stamp stays in the same place and creates a circle.

I repeated this rotating and stamping for a total of four times which created my first part of the wreath. I repeated this stamping and rotating for the second stamp and then the third stamp. I used Black Soot Archival Ink and then water colored the image using a water brush and Distress Ink in Salvaged Patina, Bundles Sage and Rustic Wilderness. Once the coloring was completed, I used a pair of scissors to fussy cut the wreath.

For the tone on tone background, I once again created a background by laying out my stamps using my stamp positioning tool. I then stamped them with Salvaged Patina Distress Ink onto a slightly lighter color of cardstock from the Scrapbook.com Cools A2 Paper Pad.

To finish off the card, I added a die cut sentiment using the Scrapbook.com Thank You Sentiments Dies. I die cut it from white cardstock adhered to double sided foam adhesive, like I did on the previous cards. However, I also die cut it from black cardstock and slightly offset it to achieve a shadowed effect.

I hope you all enjoyed my One Stamp Set 5 Ways blog post today. It was definitely a fun challenge for me to use one set multiple times and with a slightly different technique each time. By using similar colors throughout though, it made the process rather easy and enjoyable.

Supplies

Below you can find the products I used to create this project along with compensated affiliate links to Scrapbook.com. These links are at absolutely no extra cost to you. If you want to learn more about what an affiliate link is, you can see my full affiliate and product disclosure statement here. 

1. Pops of Color + Ranger Opaque Texture Paste

2. Pops of Color + Therm O Web Transfer Gel Duo

3. Pops of Color + Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste

Supplies

Salvaged Patina, the latest Tim Holtz Distress Ink color, is now available and I must say it's definitely my favorite color so far. But then, I kind of say that everytime a new color is revealed! Do you feel the same way? I'm so excited that Tim and Ranger graciously sent the new color to me and of course, as soon as it arrived, I ran to my craft room to start playing. I began by inking some swatches and creating some backgrounds. During the process of playing, I ended up creating this Collection of Specimens card that uses the Salvaged Patina Distress Paint and Distress Glaze. These are two of the mediums that I use a little less often than the inks, and I really enjoyed playing with them!

To get started, I took a piece of gold metallic Kraft Stock and embossed it using the Foundry 3D Embossing Folder. I then applied Salvaged Patina Distress Paint to it using my finger so I could get it into all the depressions. To get the distressed look, I wiped off some of the paint using a paper towel. With this technique, you want to allow the paint to just start to dry before you begin wiping off the paint so that some of it sticks to the paper. After wiping off the paint and getting the look I was going for, I allowed the paint to dry. 

Once the paint was completely dry, I used Mermaid Lagoon Archival Ink to stamp images from the Field Notes and Specimen. I used Archival Ink for the stamping because I was stamping over a painted surface and Distress Ink would never have dried on the nonporous surface.

Next, I worked on the gears. These are cut from chipboard using the Mechanical Bigz Die. I first applied Distress Grit Paste here and there to the gears and set them to the side to dry. Once the grip paste was dry, I painted them with Antiqued Bronze Distress Paint and allowed that to dry. Next came the magic! Using my finger to lightly apply Salvaged Patina Distress Paint to the raised areas created by the Grit Paste. If you apply too much of the Salvaged Patina, just let it completely dry and then add a little more Antiqued Bronze over it. The main thing to remember when working with paint is allowing it to completely dry between colors. If you don't, you are much more likely to end up with mud! The Machinery Heads were painted with Distress Collage Medium and once it was dry, I added Mushroom Alcohol Ink.

Now onto the fabulous beetle. He is from the Specimen Stamp Set and stamped onto Distress Heavystock using Black Soot Archival Ink twice. Using a Distress Embossing Pen I applied embossing ink to the body of the bug on one of the images, sprinkled Salvaged Patina Distress Glaze over the area and heat embossed it. I repeated this process 3 times to build up a thick layer of the glaze and mimic the look of exoskeleton. I then fussy cut the entire image and then just the body to create two layers that I adhered together using double sided foam adhesive.

To finish off the design, I added some leaves from the Skeleton Leaves Thinlits which were die cut from Distress Watercolor Paper and smooshed into a bit of Old Paper Distress Ink. I also added stamped images from the Field Notes Stamp Set which I stamped in Vintage Photo Archival Ink. These were also smooshed into Old Paper Distress Ink and after trimming them to size, I inked the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

The final step was to layer the main panel onto a piece of watercolor paper that was smooshed into Old Paper Distress Ink and then onto a piece of metallic Kraft Stock. The finished size of this card is 5x7 inches.

Thanks for stopping by today and checking out my Collection of Specimen Card created using the brand new Tim Holtz Distress Ink Color Salvaged Patina!

Those of you that are new here may or may not know that I actually first developed the paper crafting bug when I was introduced to scrapbooking way back in 1997. I continued scrapbooking for many years, but in 2016 I really started to lose my love of it so I just stopped and switched over to making cards and coloring. It was a great change and one I really loved. Then in 2019 I slowly began playing around more with mixed media and I then fell in love with all things Tim Holtz!

I realize, many of you here know the Tim Holtz side of me, so I hope you can appreciate my need to mix things up here and there and that I really just love to share what I enjoy creating. Don't worry, I'm definitely still in love with all things Tim Holtz, and most of what you see here will continue to be of that style, but I wanted to share how Scrapbook.com Simple Scrapbooks inspired me to start scrapbooking again.

Last year, as was the case for many of us, was a time of reflection, introspection, change and growth. I also began to get the itch for scrapbooking again but I knew I needed it be different than the last time. I was no longer interested in large 12x12 layouts with lots of patterned paper and embellishments. I wanted something simple and pocket pages seemed the way to go. I had never really done them before, so working with pockets was a bit of a learning curve for me in how to organize and lay out out my pages. However, with the help of the Scrapbook.com Simple Scrapbook Pocket Cards I have found a groove and fallen in love with the format. I decided to stick with a much smaller size and I'm currently working in the 6x8 albums. It's just enough room for me to include a few photos, but most importantly room for my journaling and the story behind the photos. This was never my strong suit, as I really just liked playing with the paper and embellishments, but this time around I needed the focus to be different.

On the pages I'm sharing today I used the Scrapbook.com Simple Scrapbooks Adventure Calls Cards and I combined it with various embellishments from Pinkfresh Studio Some Days collection.

They also have tabbed dividers that are sized to help further organize 4x6 and 3x4 pocket cards and they come in sets of white, warms and cools. These packs of dividers come with labels, however I'm still so new with this, that I'm not quite ready to divide them by theme or anything so for now I haven't labeled anything and I'm just using them to divide the different sets I currently have in my stash.

I hope you enjoyed this peak into how Scrapbooks.com Simple Scrapbooks inspired me to start scrapbooking again along with the current process and set up I'm using.