{Spotlight Project} Maria Ghosts a Distress Inked Background

Remember when I ghosted a Distress Ink marker background by spritzing water through a stencil? Well today we'll be taking advantage of the special Distress Ink properties once again. This time I'm ghosting a background I inked up the old fashioned way, using water on a paintbrush to remove the color from stamped images.

Here's the card.  See how all the stamped images are "ghosted"? Let's see how that's done.

STEP 1

Took a look at my Distress Ink chart and chose three colors I've never combined before, Iced Spruce, Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky.

STEP 2

Gathered my supplies - Neenah white cardstock, Distress Inks, applicator tools, gray Versafine ink and a paintbrush. Also had Born to Roam ready to go.

STEP 3

Applied the inks to my panel, first Weathered Wood, then Iced Spruce and finally going around all the edges and over everything lightly with Stormy Sky. I did go back in with both of the other colors for a little better coverage then too.

 




 STEP 4

 I inked up the stamp set on the acetate sheet with Versafine. I laid the inked panel onto this, covered it with a piece of paper and rubbed my hands over it to get the images onto the panel. This is easier than trying to pick up the acetate sheet to stamp with it.

STEP 5

Then I "painted" the images with a wet paint brush.  TIP: If you just drop the water into the image and smooth it out a bit (not painting back and forth) you won't have any pilling problems. The Distress Ink just disappears, leaving a "ghost" image as it dries.

STEP 6

You could skip this next step, but for interest I added water droplets from my spray bottle and then spritzed a Perfect Pearls mixture for some shimmer. I let the damp panel dry overnight, pressed between the pages of an old book to smooth it out. TIP: Spritzing a dry but warped panel with a mini mister once or twice from the reverse before pressing it helps soften the paper fibers and aide the flattening out.

STEP 7

The last step was finishing up the card with a sentiment. I had decided that these images would work well for a graduation card. Don't you love all those sentiments? So I did some die cutting and heat embossing. TIP: When using craft foam as the bottom layer of a die cut sentiment, leave the foam in place, add adhesive (I use Matt Medium) to the back of the cardstock top layer and adhere it to the foam. Makes the process easier AND maintains the shape.

BTW, Kelly L. has a video on Water Bleaching a heat embossed image if you're interested! The process of painting with water is the same.

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Ready to give ghosting a go? Remember if you try out any of the techniques from our Spotlight posts and hook your project up at our Spotlight Project Showcase  you have a chance to win a $15 gift certificate (random drawing) OR your choice of 5x7 stamp set + a Spotlight Project guest designer spot (randomly drawn from the Top 3 picks).

Tschüss,

Maria


Products Maria used in today's project: