Step by Step Distress Oxide Tag

This is a really photo heavy post to show each step.  At some point I will get organised so I can do videos instead but this is in response to someone new to all this on how to produce these inky tags!!

I used Distress Oxides in Picked Raspberry, Salty Ocean and Spiced Marmalade to create these inky tags.  Distress Oxides are a combination of pigment and dye inks and are fantastic to play with.  They are beautiful to stamp with as they have a felt pad, rather than a spongy foamlike pad typical of pigment inks, which give a firm pad to stamp from.

I also used the 'Say it', 'Bloom' and 'Truths' stamps from Creative Bea.  I always use a Versafine black inkpad whenever I am stamping in black.

To start I tapped the Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxide onto a plastic bag.  You can also use an acrylic block or a glass worktop saver!

Spritzing the ink causes it to form these bobbles of ink.

I swished and tapped a luggage tag from Tesco into the ink (the least shiny side of the tag)....

... which creates this effect.

I tap the excess ink leftover onto my copier paper.  I keep a pile of this under where I'm working.

Spritzing the tag with water has you heat it with a heat gun (for those new to stamping, this is not a hairdryer or paint stripper!!) creates this lovely texture.

Here you can see the difference between spritzing and not spritzing!

Splashing water onto the tag also gives a different effect but I do not have the right hand action for flicking water onto paper so I spritz it into my hands then clap merrily over the inked area!

I then dabbed the water droplets with tissue as I didn't have any kitchen towel to hand (I usually roll this across)

I repeated the ink process with Picked Raspberry ...

then Salty Ocean.

Tapping a Distress Oxide inkpad onto an acrylic block and spritzing it with water means you can then pick ink up with a damp paintbrush ...

and, by tapping the paintbrush with your other hand, create gorgeous splashes of ink.

I used the top and bottom of a tumbler to stamp circular marks on the tag...

... and the edge of an acrylic block to add lines.

I stamped the word 'grace' along the edge of the tag, continually stamping until the stamp ran out of ink.  This gives a lovely texture.

I used my Versafine ink pad to stamp the above truth ..

and tore up some of the inky copier paper to add underneath the words, using a simple glue stick.

The little daisies from the 'Bloom' stamp set are easy to cut out and add to the tag. 

Using different stamps gives a tag a different theme!

Well done if you made it this far.  I hope it was useful.  I am a Creative Bea Ambassador so received some of these stamps as a gift x