Don't Be a Picklebump

Last week, my friend Lisa who runs Artistcellar.com challenged her facebook followers to play with the new line of Distressed Stains from Ranger. I submitted the following Artist Trading Card (ATC).

I cut the card from cardstock and then put the Peeled Paint and Broken China stain on the card. I spritzed it with some water and then let the colors run together. I hit it with the heat gun to speed up the drying, dabbed more color on top then hit it with the heat gun again. Once everything was dry, I took my letter stamps in a typewriter font and used the Black Soot Distressed Ink as the stamping color.

When I first heard of the stain, I resisted buying it because I wasn’t sure what the difference between it, the Distressed Ink Pad, and the Distressed Re-inker were. I thought if I just mixed some of the re-inker in water I could get the same effect. However, I forgot water activates the distressing properties of the ink. So I did a little investigating and here’s the difference.

The stains are a fluid water-based dye. They are quick and easy way to lay down lots of color on backgrounds or in large areas. The dabbers on the bottle are spring activated, made of nylon, and can used like a paint brush.

The ink pads are used in smaller areas and to add effects to the paper such as aging and tinting. The ink pads allow you to put down a smaller amount of water-based ink on your craft sheet and then blend it into edges of your paper with a small pad. You can also stamp with the ink pads.

The re-inkers are used to re-ink your stamp pads with color, although I found several tutorials for using them in other ways. If you choose to use your re-inkers for something other than re-inking your Distressed Ink Pads, be sure to not add any water to the re-inker bottle as it will activate the distressing properties of the ink.

All in all I was very impressed with the stains. So I’m going to start added to my collection bit by bit.