Playing with Distress Oxides again.

 This week I have been experimenting with distress oxide  inks  on various types of card stock.  The  background on these cards were created by squishing the ink pads onto a baking sheet and  spritzing the ink with water and  laying the card onto the wet ink. 

I found technique this can be a bit  hit and miss, too much water on the baking sheet and the inks  seem too mix under the card giving a rather muddy look to the colours rather than the clean bright colours of the pads. 

Too little water and the ink doesn't spread enough to give even coverage so  you're left with lots of dry white patches. Which really isn't a good look.
  

After much experimentation  I found the best way to combat the muddiness  and to avoid  the dry patches is to spritz the ink on the baking sheet and then lightly spritz the card stock before laying it into the ink.
In my opinion this technique works best on glossy card stock.  BUT pigment inks like Versafine are not suitable for glossy card stock.


I love  Versafine ink for stamping  silhouettes as it's a real dense black ink,  but Versafine ink rubs off glossy card even after it has dried.
I had a choice here, .. do I splash out on more black ink pads or try to find a card that will react well with water and Versafine ink.
I decided to find a more suitable card stock.  
 The best results I got were on Multifarious card stock ... sold by Lavinia Stamps. This stuff retails at £5.80  for 10 sheets.  Which is pretty expensive card for practicing on.     
I tried  various  types of card and most didn't react well. 
My second choice of paper for this technique is be  watercolour paper....  Nothing fancy or expensive.  I used a block  of watercolour paper from The Works  which cost £4.00 for 20 sheets. The sheet are not as big as A4 sheet but it does work out a little cheaper.
Most watercolour papers that I have worked with have a course side and a slightly smoother,  flatter side.  It's best to work on the flatter side as it's easier to stamp on. However,  I found I needed  to stamp the larger silhouette images several times  fill in the misses caused by the slight texture on the paper. So it is  really important to have stamp positioning tool to enable over stamping.

Most of  the stamps used in the making of these cards are from Lavinia Stamps.