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

do you clean your stencils?

Don't you just love to get parcels?  This stunning stamp, Butterfly Pattern by Stampendous, was amongst many goodies in my parcel this morning.

As soon as I saw it on The Stampman's website I knew it was one of those 'must have' stamps!!  It looks like it would sit well in the corner of a journal page or card, and it's full of tiny patterns that can be used in numerous ways.

The background is a mop up page from some more 'creative palette' play this morning.  I find I often like these papers more than my intended piece!  Amongst the stamps (yes, there were more!!) Jill had included some stencils for me to borrow.  She was a little concerned that she hadn't had time to clean them ..

... but I have to say, they look right at home!! (Mine are the ones on the left, Jill's the three on the right).

The colour in the photo above really isn't true but hopefully you get the idea.  It's one of the tags that I mentioned was waiting to be finished in my last but one post and has a 'creative palette' monoprinted background.  It uses two more of my very favourite new stamps, a gorgeous, gorgeous text stamp from the Stampendous stack art set 'Royal Heart Stack' and the beautiful 'cow parsley' by Jane Gill for Woodware.  And don't you just love 'found poetry'?

There are a couple more sneak peeks of my preparations for this weekend's Great British Craft Festival over on The StampMan blog if you'd like to look.  Please come and say hi if you are visiting the show.  It's at Bolton Arena, Horwich, BL6 6LB and starts both days at 10am.  You'll find us on stand 34A, opposite the seating area which I understand has a handy cafe pod!! 

Papillon postcard

Happy new year!!
I've been sorting out my craft room and came across a colour copy of the back of an old postcard so I decided to use it as the base of a tag.

There came a point in it's making when I really didn't like this tag!  I'd coloured the middle moth but re-stamping it onto plain white paper and gluing it over the top retrieved it for me.  I repeated this for the other butterfly and moth too.

 The green at the top was still a little too green but a smudge of cream paint through a stencil here and there knocked it back a little and now I like it :)

I seem to have a theme going in my journals at the moment, but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with these brightly coloured backgrounds!  Although I do quite like this tag on there ....

a tag and an apron

Being ill just after Christmas is rubbish (I've had some kind of sickness bug) but after a couple of days reading, sleeping, perusing Pinterest and watching i-player (I don't know what I'd do without my i-pad!!!) I was well enough to sit up and play with my inks and stamps.

I used some Tim Holtz stamps from the 'mini muse' and 'purely random' sets, enjoying adding tiny bits of detail to the background of my manilla tag.

I just couldn't resist finishing it off with a scattering of hydrangeas.

Now all the presents are opened I can share some sewing I did just before Christmas for a friend of mine.  She loves 'dottie angel' so I decided to make a dottie-angel inspired apron.  It includes a little up-cycling - I found a denim shirt in my fabric collection and used the button edge to make the ties and the pocket as an extra pocket on the front.