May Challenge Inspiration with DT Katie

Good Morning! Half way through the month and how are you going with this months challenge? I decided to have a go at this one and thought I would share with you a really fun way to make a background using distress oxide inks. Have I mentioned before that these are my all time favourite inks?!

First let's look at the challenge, which you can find in the Facebook group here.

I was inspired firstly by the collection of colours and the idea of an accident, or the word "oops", and of course who doesn't like a sketch to make their life easier! I wanted to create a background that was a little bit like the camouflage in the picture using the colour palette. So I pulled out my distress oxide inks and went to work. This is my final page:

I chose the following distress oxide ink colours: Bundled Sage, Frayed Burlap, Peeled Paint, Cracked Pistachio and Twisted Citron which all matched the palette fairly well. To create my background I started with the lightest colour, bundled sage, "smooshed" some ink onto my craft mat and spritzed with a little water to create a kind of water colour puddle. Then I used my brayer to pick up some colour and add to my white cardstock. I did this with each colour, letting each layer dry before adding the next one and adding them lightest to darkest, building up a mixed background.

I also created some interesting prints using my gel press plate using the same distress oxide inks. I simply smooshed (love that word!) the ink onto the plate, spread it around with my brayer and then took some prints. I also used some white acrylic paint with some stencils to add some details. I used plain copy paper for my prints and ended up with some interesting pieces. I decided to cut one of these down, mount on some cardstock for rigidity and turn it into a tag, this is where my title and journaling are found.

For some layering pieces on the page I decided to use some of my Minc collection. Specifically some of the 6x6 paper, alphas and ephemera. All these items come printed and cut ready for you to choose a foil colour to add. I decided to use black and gold, although the black is a little hard to see in the photos!

Here you can see a close up of some of the ephemera, the gold is obvious, but the words on the tag and the camera outline are also foiled in black.

 

Here you can see the gold on the patterned paper and star, and the tab is black foil.

 And finally the title is black foil, a little shine is seen here, and the star. The triangles were added with a stencil that I masked off just to allow one row to be seen and I used black soot distress oxide ink. I used a foam blending tool to add the ink to the stencil, such a useful tool! I also smooshed some black soot onto my craft mat, added a little water and used a biggish round brush to add some black splatters to the page to finish it off. 

Well, thanks for stopping by, I hope I have encouraged you to use your distress oxides in all kinds of new and interesting ways! And don't forget to enter the monthly challenge too.

Katie x