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Distress Speckled Egg and Repeating Pattern Stamping

Distress Speckled Egg and Repeating Pattern Stamping

Distress Speckled Egg and Repeating Pattern Stamping

Hi all, hope you're all enjoying Father's Day and that lockdown isn't preventing you seeing them. I think my Dad would have gone crazy being stuck indoors this long and not able to sit on a riverbank to fish so although I'd love the chance to spend today with him it's perhaps for the best that he's not here to suffer lockdown.

Today I'm focusing on two things - showing off the new colour in the distress range from Tim Holtz and Ranger and how to create your own perfect repeating pattern using stamps. The technique I'm using here is one I picked up from Dawn, the designer behind the Wplus9 brand, and rather than me video myself doing it (not brave enough for that yet!) here's a link to her original video.

Basically the essence is you create yourself a jig/template from a 6" square piece of copy paper and lay out your pattern in one quadrant. Then using a stamping platform or stamp jig if you don't have a platform (you can make your own jig from lego if you don't have one of those either - it just means you can align your stamps in the same place every time) you simply repeat stamp the pattern in all 4 quandrants to build up your pattern.

I used one of the fabulous new stamps from the Reverse Confetti birthday release - sketched florals which is just so delicate and pretty. I also wanted to play with the new colour in the distress range so kept the colours simple. All the outlines were stamped in Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide. The solids were done in Speckled Egg but in two different versions - the leaves are in the standard distress and the flowers in oxide. Although they are both speckeld egg there is a subtle difference to the two inks.

We had some questions in our VIPs group on Facebook about what the differnce is between Distress and Oxides. The first distinct difference is one of formula. Distress Inks fall into the family of dye inks. Dye inks are transparent in nature and, due to their "thin" quality, dry quickly. Distress Oxides, on the other hand, are primarily constructed of pigment ink, a type of ink that is opaque and, due to its natural thickness, dries more slowly. It is important to note, however, that Distress Oxides are technically a hybrid - containing mostly pigment ink, but also some dye ink too.

Distress Oxides begin to oxidize immediately, giving them a chalky finished look, even though they contain absolutely no chalk. Because of this milky oxidizing effect and the fact that they are pigment inks, which makes them more opaque, they tend to "cover up" their background (i.e. the white cardstock). This makes the Distress Inks appear brighter and more vibrant in color when used on a white piece of cardstock (hence why the leaves on my pattern seem brighter and bluer) but had I stamped the pattern on coloured card (like kraft) then the standard distress wouldn't show up as much as the oxide.

Although the original distress were loved by many crafters for ink blending, I personally could never get a good result with them. If I do any blended background now it is ALWAYS with oxides - for me them blend seemlessly and I am never disappointed. I did a quick blend of both new pads here and had to work much harder on the standard distress to get a smooth finish but I am sure those who are better with ink than me get great results - it's as with most things, personal preference.

There are many more properties for both inks - if you want to get to knwo them better than I suggest getting it direct from the guy who developed them for Ranger. Here's a video where Tim explains the difference when oxides were first released.

Back to my pattern piece - I trimmed it down to create a card with it. Adding a central element again sticking to the same two colours but this time I added the new Glazes from Ranger over the top of the stamped oxides to make the elements pop a little more. I have to say the glazes are brand new to me and I love them. They are SUPER FINE translucent powders which melt really quickly and add a gorgeous finish. I can't wait to experiment more. Here I added them into an envelope using Mama Elephant's Botanic Envelope die but adding the stamped florals. I ink blended speckled egg on the envelope die cut layers and stamped the sentiment from MFT's Bitty Birthday Wishes using the same ink (in hindsight I should have glazed that too) I popped the envelope up on foam pads to finish the card.

I wanted to have another play with the pattern building - this time I skipped a step and didn't stamp out the jig I just layed them out - and therefore didn't see that they overlap in the middle before I stamped onto my cardstock! Whoops! In the end I decided to live with it, and I kind of like the central circle it makes. Depending on what I do with it, I can always cover it up too!

For this one, I did what Dawn does in the video and added some smaller stamps to fill in the "white space" between the repeat pattern. I did this by eye, but you could put the tiny stamps in the platform if you want perfect repeats. For the fill ins I used a couple of tiny stamps from Altenew's Poinsettia Pieces.

All just stamped with Shady Lane Versafine onto a tonal green cardstock.

Hope this gives you a new take on patterned background stamping - it would work for lots of different small images not just florals - so I'd love to see what you can make with it. Share your makes with us in the VIPS group.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

We've had some technical issues this week so I am behind on our normal order packing schedule - we normally aim to ship all orders within 48 working hours (excludes weekends and bank holidays) but we're running more at 72 at the moment but I will do my very best to catch up. Our printer died on Friday morning so we have a new one coming tomorrow - hopefully it turns up early and we can get orders printed, but bear with us whilst we get over this issue (I bought a little back up printer too to make sure we're never in this position of not being able to print orders again)

In terms of arrivals this week here's the news:

Lawn Fawn release is Thursday and it WILL be in store by 7am that morning.
Stamping Bella release is in transit and will be in store as soon as I get time to add it after it gets here (see above - it may take a while to catch up on orders so other than adding Lawn Fawn other releases may not be added this week)
Hero Arts have finally shipped their monthly releases and new summer release to us (sorry no restocks this time) and we expect that to arrive this week too - it includes montly releases from March onwards.
Newton's Nook's latest release is on order but they haven't got the dies for the new release yet so we're holding on until it can all ship together.

That's all the news this week - if what you want isn't listed - it's not coming YET but watch this space for more news next week. It's an ongoing battle to keep on top of things so we may be behind but we will catch up eventually!!!

Thanks

Tara

21/06/2020 | View: 546 | Categories: Stamping Techniques, Repeat Pattern Building | Tags: Mama Elephant, My Favorite Things, Ranger, Reverse Confetti

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