I have been taking the Creative Chemistry 101 online classes with Tim Holtz for the past two weeks, and have learned a whole bunch of new things to do with his Distress line of products. It has been a blast... and I keep going back to the techniques from the 2nd day, as they were so much fun and I love the results. I can't explain how to do it, as we were asked not to share anything from the class on forums or blogs... only fair to those that paid for the class. But in general terms, you get the distress ink on your paper, then get water on it.. and you get cool effects. I don't know if he has shown these techniques before, or if there is something similar on You Tube.. but if you know how to use his inks to get the cool distressed looks, then you know what to do.
Well, tonight I was cleaning up my craft table, and came across a couple of foiled hearts that I made at Valentines day, when I was making a card. I didn't like the colors of foil I used for the card I was making, but couldn't make myself throw them out.. they were too pretty. So tonight I tried an experiment... I took the foiled image and my Distress ink pads and used one of the techniques from Day 2 of the class, and got some AMAZING results. The Distress ink won't stick to the foil, so you don't lose your shine, but having the distress look around the image is WOW!!! Now, instead of having a couple of hearts, that were white paper with a foiled heart, I have a couple of really cool looking Distressed hearts to use on another project sometime in the future. Not sure what I will use them on just yet... but now my head is spinning on all the possibilities of foil and distress... so those of you with a Foil Master, you don't have to leave your paper just plain... you can Distress it a la Tim Holtz!!!
I haven't taken pictures of the hearts yet, too dark tonight.. but I will try and get some pictures tomorrow after work and add them to this post.
Also, I had some scrap glitter paper left over from another project, and tried using the Distress inks on them. It was a white paper with iridescent glitter on it, and the paper "took" the ink and colored it nicely... when I tried to "distress" it with water, it didn't quite work the same as normal paper. I think because of a coating that may be used to keep the glitter on the paper. But it still colored it. Also took some Distress Stain, and just wiped that onto the glitter paper.. and that was kind of an interesting effect... not sure if it is something I would want... but it may be something to do more experimenting with. I think the type of glitter paper used may produce different results. I can't wait to have more time to do more of the techniques I learned in the class, and try it on different papers to see what I get.
Those that took the class.. what cool things have you tried, now that you know how to use the products a bit better???