PlaysWithGlue: Creative Chemistry 101

Bear with me kids, we're halfway through the class which means the blog will only be hijacked by Creative Chemistry for another 5 (or so) days...

Stained Kraft Resist Technique

Now this is a technique for me. I mean, after all...I'm a total kraft paper junky! If you can combine kraft paper with some inky goodness then SIGN ME UP! :)

For this first sample I tried to be quite similar to what Tim's example looked like. It helps me kind of "figure out" the technique and makes it easier to tell if the technique didn't work because I didn't have the technique going quite right or if I just picked horrible colors...because well, one thing I'm learning is that these inks can do some crazy good (and not so good) things depending on how you're applying them.

Distress stain colors: broken china.

Distress ink colors: weathered wood, crushed olive, dusty concord, frayed burlap

Extra technique applied: "Spritz n' flick"

Next I tried the technique using the "standard" color palette I've been working with. As I've been making samples I've been trying to work with the same colors so I can learn how the colors shift and change across various mediums and different applications. With this technique I learned that the colors shift to become much darker and more muted. This is, of course, to be expected since they're translucent dyes and kraft is a dark substrate compared to white paper.

Distress inks: fired brick, barn door, spiced marmalade, rusty hinge, broken china, dusty concord, peeled pain with frayed burlap on the edges.

Stamped image is Distress Ink "Black Soot"

Extra technique applied: "Spritz n' flick"

Stamping with Stains

Okay, so this technique rocks my world just a wee little bit. I'm not sure why, but I completely fell in love with the semi-transparent, milky like effect of stamping with Picket Fence Distress Stain. On this one I stamped with a lighter color (Archival Ink in Maganese Blue) because I wanted to see what affect it would have. I learned that even though the Maganese Blue was stamped OVER the Picket Fence, the translucent properties of the Archival Ink (dye-based) allowed the Picket Fence to look as though it was on top of the stamped image. Pretty cool, huh? Creates a little bit of a trump l'oeil effect. If you didn't want this look, you can always stamp over the Picket Fence with Archival Black instead.

Distress Stain: Picket Fence

Distress Ink: Fired brick, barn door, wild honey, tumbled glass, broken china, shabby shutters, peeled paint, dusty concord.

Dress form stamped image: Ranger Archival in Maganese Blue

Marbled Stains

This techinque is way cool. Not only can you create a mottled, marble effect, you can also create a look like marbled veins just by changing the way you apply the stains to the tag.

For the first one I stayed pretty close to Tim's example by using similar colors and "swiping" technique. The only thing I changed was to stamp my "weeds" in Sepia and the "splatters" in Olive so that I created the look of more layers to give depth to the piece.

Distress Stains: peeled paint, broken china, antique linen, wild honey, picket fence.

Distress Ink (edges): Weathered Wood

Stamps - Ranger Archival: Bird - jet black; Weeds - sepia; Spatters - olive

Stamps: Urban Tapestry from Stampers Anonymous

All excited by how well that one came out I decided to try it again, but this time I changed up the swiping technique and pulled the card through the stains in a linear fashion to create streaks of "marble veins." Seriously, how cool is that background?