Coloring with Distress Inks — DS4J Challenge – Crafting While Caffeinated with Lindsay Adreon

It is the first day of the month and that means it is time for a new Digistamps4Joy Challenge! As always it is anything goes with an optional twist. This month’s twist is to add butterflies! You have until April 30th to enter a card and be eligible for two different prizes. The first prize up for grabs is a $10.00 gift certificate to the Digistamps4Joy shop. With the prices in the store, that goes pretty far! The other prize is winner’s choice of two free digital stamps!!

I had a lot of fun with this challenge and made a video for the entire process of making my card, including designing it in Photoshop Elements. ENJOY!!

After I designed my panel in Photoshop Elements 14, I printed it off onto white cardstock with my Brother Laser Printer. I roughly trimmed it down, making sure to leave a large border to be able to tape the panel down later. I then covered the panel with gold foil from Thermoweb and ran it through my laminator in a “carrier sheet”. Once it was cooled I peeled off the foil and had a gorgeously foiled panel ready for color.

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I taped my panel down to a piece of hardboard with painter’s tape because I knew I would eventually be adding a bit of water and wanted to keep warping to a minimum. Then it was time to start coloring in the image. I did this by using my distress inks and Fantastix. I simply pressed the tip of the Fantastix onto the ink pad and then blended the ink onto the paper. **It will look pretty bad at first, but the next step will take care of all of that.** I also blended on some Salty Ocean distress ink with my mini ink blending tool onto the background or “sky” area.

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Once all of my color was down I sprayed it pretty liberally with Perfect Pearls Pearl water. I used as much water as I could, but had to keep in mind this was just regular cardstock, not watercolor paper. I let the water sit for a bit and then blotted it up with a damp baby wipe. Doing this allowed the Distress Inks to blend and move around a bit and then I hit it with my heat tool to speed up the drying process and try and reverse any warping. When it is dry the distress ink should be nice and blended out and also softened. This technique creates an almost ethereal or halo effect on your images. It is so pretty in real life.

**When you pull up the tape from the foiled image it will leave some foil on the tape. It did not affect my foiling at all.**

I trimmed my panel down to slightly smaller than A2 size, however I decided I didn’t want to distract from the panel I had put so much time and energy into. I decided to just attached it to the top left of an A2 top folding card base and then trimmed the remaining edges down. So my card is slightly smaller than a finished A2 card, however, it still fits nicely into an A2 envelope and will go through the mail with no extra postage!

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I really wonder if there will ever be an end to all of the fun things you can do with Distress Inks. They really are the most versatile ink, in my opinion. I had a lot of fun coloring with my Distress Inks and hope that you’ll give it a try too!

Don’t forget to head on over the Digistamps4Joy Blog and enter one of your cards in the challenge. Remember it’s Anything Goes so you can’t go wrong!! Also, it doesn’t have to be a Digistamps4Joy image, however, we LOVE to see them entered. If you want to check out all of the great images for purchase head on over to the Digistamps4Joy Shop!! New images are released every other Sunday so check back often!! You can check out the supply list below if you’re interested in any of the products I used on my card today. Thanks so much for looking!! Happy Crafting!!