Hello Sunshine

I found a few minutes to play with some online challenges so I first of all went with the color combination of the Color Throwdown blog.

I went with my most favorite way to create a background with Distress Stains.  I added the inks directly to an acrylic block, one color at a time, gave the ink a spritz of water and smooched it onto my watercolor paper, sliding the acrylic block down the paper.  This makes what I call a "messy" background.  I used the Freshly Made sketch to create the layout of my card.  The sentiment is from Wplus9 Designs.

I used a flower from a collection by Tim Holtz, coloring them with Distress Stains and a little accent with a Distress Crayon.  I love the way the Distress products work together so well.  

Here is the Color Throwdown challenge.

Here is the Freshly Made sketch.
Thanks for visiting, Linda (lbpost)

CardMaker Blog hop using Ranger Distress Crayons

Talk about exciting, the CardMaker Blog team has been able to play with the new Distress Crayons from Ranger Ink and wow! I still knew it was going to take some playing and experimenting to figure out just what these could do and how I would want to use them so this was my chance.  

 I am such a huge fan of anything related to Distress Inks by Tim Holtz and I knew these crayons would be no exception to the fun and versatility.  The first thing you need to know about these crayons is that they can do many things.  There isn't one correct way to put them to use in your crafting projects.  That's where experimenting comes in for sure.  You have to realize the different things these can do. 

For my first card, I first of all used a Tim Holtz stencil with some white embossing paste to create a background on watercolor paper and left that to dry.  

I took three colors of the crayons and one at a time colored a portion of my embossing paste background.  I then kept adding spritzes of water to my piece.  I wanted the color to sink into all of the highs and lows of my stencil design.  As I added more color and more water, I worked the colors around and together with my fingers.  I wanted this to be rather "sloppy" and uneven.  When I was happy with my mix, I set it aside to dry. 

 I used a Tim Holtz flower stamp to be my finishing touch.  I did color this with matching Distress Stains and water.  This is a big bonus with the Distress Inks, the colors are the same and so they all can work together.  I finished this flower off by adding Glossy Accents to the petals of the flower.  The sentiment is a die from Simon Says Stamp.  

 Once I started working with the crayons I very quickly found a few ways that I liked to use them.  For this card, I used an extremely simple technique. The butterflies were stamped on watercolor paper and embossed with white embossing powder. Those embossed lines now will act as a resist to the other inks I'm adding.  This stamp set includes the sentiment and three different kinds of butterflies plus the little line of hearts.  

 I most often use water with the Distress Inks but for this card I wanted to try just coloring directly onto the butterflies and the paper.  I scribbled a small patch of one crayon on each butterfly and then moved that color around with my finger.  The color is rather thick as it comes off of the crayon and it is so easy to move it and blend it.  For each butterfly I used two colors of crayons, blending the shades.  I love the intensity of the colors and how nicely they added color, making each butterfly highlighted just right.  

From my blog hop on over to Lisa's blog for more Distress Crayon ideas.  

This also fits with the Fusion Challenge.

Thanks for visiting, Linda (lbpost)