Backporch: Technique of the Week: Distress Stain Daubers Two Ways

This post is in conjunction with the Art 'n Soul newsletter Technique of the Week.

I played with some of my Distress Stain daubers, and I have to say that this stuff is so much fun. One of the things that I wanted to try first is to see what would happen if I applied stain to a stamp.

This is a pretty simple one layer card, but it was fun to make, and I love how the colors turned out.

Distress Stain comes two different ways, spray and dauber bottles. I like both of them, but they are very different in how the finished product appears. I like the sprays, but they are just that. The daubers seem to be more versatile. For this project, I chose Cracked Pistachio, Mermaid Lagoon, Fossilized Amber and Abandoned Coral. I also chose a Magenta stamp, 85.020.N Swirly Leaves, chosen partly for the amount of solid rubber on the stamp

Of course I used the MISTI tool when stamping, because I did think that I would want to ink and stamp more than once.

And I was right. I think I inked and stamped about 3 times, and I really liked the results.

The stain really beads up on the stamp surface, but I wasn't worried, knowing that I could stamp in the same place as many times as I wanted to.

The first stamping was pretty, but I wanted more definition to the image. I added the colors in rainbow order so that even if I added one adjacent ink over another, it would not make mud, but it would blend in a pleasing way.

I really like the watercolor-y look this gives and I will use the stain daubers to ink my stamps more often. I put a little of the Mermaid Lagoon stain on my mat and picked it up with a paintbrush to flick some specks on the image also.

I wanted to use the daubers in a second way, so I created a background using them. (First, while I had the stamp in the MISTI, I stamped a second panel to use with the background).

To make the background, I tried just dragging the daubers over first regular cardstock, and then over watercolor cardstock. The stain really soaked into the regular cardstock pretty quickly, so it was difficult to do much blending of the colors.

When I rubbed the daubers over watercolor cardstock however, I sprayed it with pearly water (1/4 tsp Perfect Pearls powder mixed with 2 oz water) and the colors blended beautifully.

Once my panels had dried, I put the two cards together. For the first card, I stamped it with the Magenta sentiment stamp 07.869.D Thinking of You. I used Mermaid Lagoon Distress ink for the stamping so it would match the color in the image.

I decided to use the rejected regular piece of cardstock to mat my card. I had tried putting some water splotches on it and I think my wet baby wipe got on it too, but none of that would show. I cut my stamped panel to 3.75" x 5" using the Lawn Fawn die LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables; and I cut the matting panel with Die-Namics MFT-463 Blueprints 13 (which has a die that will cut a stitched rectangle to 4" x 5.25")

This is what the panels look like together, and I think it's a good use of the rejected piece of cardstock. (And yes Eion, I reversed the colors between the front panel and the mat on purpose).

I adhered the pieces to a base card and added some sequins for added interest.

For the second card, I stamped the Swirly Leaves stamp onto the background with Mermaid Lagoon stain. I then stamped the Magenta sentiment 07.962.F Happy Birthday Little in the corner with Versamark ink and embossed it with White Diamond Embossing powder.

Since I didn't want to cover too much of the background, I cut the original stamped panel into a smaller piece 4" x 1.75" using Die-Namics MFT-470 Horizontal Stitched Strips, and cut a slightly smaller piece of craft foam to adhere to the back of the panel, and popped it up on the background piece.

Here's the finished second card. The focal image is spotlighted with the same image repeated on the background. I added some sequins for bling.

I hope this will encourage you to try using Distress stain daubers. There are other things you can do with them as well, including mixing colors and die-cutting, and using them to make "splats" I will try to explore other uses in future posts.

Magenta Products Used:

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp or product name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).