2LO Texture-Making Class : Distressed Stains

This one has a dry-brushed look.

Continuing with Denise Love's Texture-Making Class at 2 Lil Owls.   I have been most interested in this technique with Ranger's Distress Stains.  I stocked up on the stains during a 40%-off sale at Joann's a few weeks ago.   I also had a variety of Starburst Stains from a class a few years ago, realizing they should work brilliantly on paper where as they were blah on fabric.   Now that I understand the technique, I can make some of my own textures with them. 

After the brilliance, vibrancy , and depth of the alcohol inks last week, I found it hard to shift gears with this new medium--even though I was looking forward to getting started.  I had such high expectations after the alcohol inks, these stained textures seemed to be a little meh in comparison.  Of course, it's not really fair to compare them.  This is a whole new medium with different techniques and different results.   (Just to check--the Yupo paper is a waste of time with these stains.)

Although I had watched the class video a few weeks ago, I thought I knew what to do and dug in ...  Mine were not coming out like Denise's though.  Turns out, I had not remembered to spray the watercolor paper to wet it down before pulling the print--nor was I using the heat tool to dry them quickly.   It makes a difference with wet paper vs. dry, and in letting them dry in their own time.  In some ways this is similar to the watercolor techniques that we started with.

I am also grateful for the scanner I have -- These actually look better (to my eyes) after being scanned and digitized that they do in real life.  There are layers and depths that my eyes seem to be missing in real life.  The only touch-ups these have had in digital is some slight cropping or straightening on just a few of the images. 

Apologies for this very looonnnggg post.  Too many delicious textures to leave out (and I did leave out a few).  Enjoy the eye candy!

 Black Soot and deep purple with the silver metallic.  

This one is hard to see in real life, but scanned beautifully!

 I think I was going for tree bark with this one.

 Red, black and silver.

 For these, I'd watched some additional videos on Distress Stains and learned that they reacted with water even after they were dry.   So this one has water dripped on it.

 These two kind of look like Amazonian rain forests from above.

 More tree bark.

Mmmmmmh!

Still haven't seen enough?  Denise Love has a couple of gorgeous collections in her 2 Lil Owls Shop that are based on these Distressed Stains.  They are absolutely breathtaking!  Go see :

Rendevous and Captivate are two of Denise Love's collections for sale, if you are so inclined.