Eclectic Paperie: Distress Paint Games

Hello everyone, Alison here. Hope you all had a great weekend, and are ready for whatever the new week brings.

I wanted to share some of what I've been getting up to with the Tim Holtz Distress Paints, so I'm offering up a step-by-step through the backgrounds of my set of tags "What We Hold On To", which you may have seen over at Words and Pictures. If you'd like to see more details of the finished pieces, you'll find them here.

Warning: it's a process post, so there are lots of pictures - maybe a cup of tea to help you through?!

First, here's a reminder of the finished trio of tags:

They all started from using the paints to do Tim's wrinkle-free distress technique, and all three are from one painty splurge on the craft mat. Here's the first one after the first swipe... just look at that marbleising (that's what Sir Tim calls it, so that's good enough for me!).

And here it is after several dabbings and daubings more. You have to dry between each layer to set the effect you've achieved. And, once dry, it's perfectly true: the paint doesn't react to moisture any longer, so you can do whatever you like over the top of it, without disturbing your work so far...

By the way, it's Seedless Preserves, Weathered Wood and Picket Fence I'm playing with here. Sorry, my lovely photo of the paint on the mat itself came out all blurry - I was photographing in the evening, so some of the pictures are slightly suspect, I'm afraid!

Once you've added water, the paint goes a long way, so I was able to get three progressively paler versions out of the delicious smooshy mess on the table!

Next step was to try out stamping with Archival ink on top of the paint: it works brilliantly! The dry surface is smooth, yet somehow toothy at the same time, and takes the ink beautifully for a really sharp image.

Next I had to try stamping with the paints themselves... I used a texture stamp (these are all Artistic Outpost stamps by the way) which is like tiny bubble wrap, and I love the effect of it bubbling all over the place like little clusters of grapes or wisteria!

Of course, you get a slightly different look on each colour combination... but I love how the layers are building up.

Even though the paints are so fluid, you can still get great added texture when you stamp with them.

And of course you know if I'm anywhere near a tag, there's probably going to be some edging with Vintage Photo Distress Ink going on too... and wow, I love how this works. There's sort of a resist effect from the paints - so again, they hold their own - but they also respond really well to the ink, warming up, and gaining great depth from it.

And I really enjoyed the next stage too... playing with the Flourish Texture Fade embossing folder to add some texture.

Once embossed, I highlighted each of the flourishes with some Distress Paint, smoothed on with my fingertips - different colours for different tags.

Then, what else but a bit more Vintage Photo DI for added oomph!

The photographs of these are being done outside in daylight now, so the colours are slightly truer than some of the stages.

By now, I really didn't want to cover up my beautiful backgrounds, so the composition of the tags was dictated by making sure as much as possible could still be seen!

I love that you still have that clarity of all the layers still visible.

But that's not all the Distress Paints were involved in on these tags. I also used the Weathered Wood to alter the embellishments - two Wendy Vecchi pieces, and a metal clock from my stash.

And they're also involved in dyeing the crinkle ribbon. If you use solely DPs on the ribbon you get a very matte, opaque look; fabulously shabby, but not quite what I wanted for these tags. So I had a little go at mixing Distress Paint and Distress Stains on the mat for the ribbons, and I love the result.