Tim Holtz Distress Marker Tutorial

 

So, we all know the biggest hype from Winter CHA 2012 was the Distress Markers by Tim Holtz!  Well, we are on our second shipment in the shop – the first time around we could not get our hands on any, they were all grabbed up before we could even price them properly – and this time we made sure we kept a few so that we could show you just how great they really are!  The picture above shows these pens off in full glory – we inked a beautiful stamp with various colours, and just stamped onto plain heavyweight cream cardstock.  Then we misted the same stamp with a mini-mister filled with water without re-inking it, and stamped it again.  Wow.  That is all we can say – the image speaks for itself.

Here we have the finished item and all the products used to create it.  I took a No 8 American Tag, 13#, and completely covered it with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink using my blending tool.

I then coloured one of the Butterflies on the Tim Holtz Butterflies and Moths stamp.  I really love that you can only colour what you want – even though there is more than 1 image on the stamp. 

I stamped it onto watercolour paper once, and then misted it with my water-filled mini-mister.

I stamped it again and the image above is the result I got.  I was very happy with it.

I then outlined the edges of both the tag and the butterfly with the Aged Mahogany Distress Marker.  Just look how it pops!

   

Next I inked up my Prima Almanac Typewriter stamp with the Black Soot Distress Marker.

 

It gives a wonderfully detailed image!

 

I sprayed my tag with my mini mister – love how the Distress Ink reacts with the water!!

Next I punched a few hearts from my left over paper and I coloured them with my Barn Door Distress Marker.  I misted the big one with my mini-mister and it made it slightly lighter than the small one on the left.

I then decided to see how the marker would react to some Perfect Pearls, so I took some Perfect Red Perfect Pearls and just brushed it onto the heart.  It looks really nice and shimmery in real life!

With my last heart, I wet my paper THOROUGHLY and then I just touched the Distress Marker onto the paper.  You can see how the ink “streaked”.  It was a bit light to my taste for this experiment, so I added some more colour with the Distress Marker 

After adding more and more colour, it ended up looking like this!  I have to add here – when you use the Distress Marker on watercolour paper saturated with water like this, it tends to “lighten” your marker.  I forgot to take pictures, but I had to actually make a few marks on some scrap papers to get the pen to be it’s correct colour again.  I loved discovering this – it means that if I need a lighter shade, I can just dip my pen into some water, and when I am done, just get the original colour back by making a few strokes on some paper.

Once again – the finished item.  The “white” shadow you see under the black typewriter is where I stamped with the Picket Fence Distress Marker – I did not dry my tag first before stamping on it, so it did not give me the effect I wanted.  This is not a tag I plan on doing anything more with than use it as a sample – so I will now know what NOT to do and what to do with my Tim Holtz Distress Markers!  These markers are for sale here.  There is a pretty good deal if you buy a whole set – you save almost R300!!!  Get yours now!