Thursday, June 10, 2010

~ Easy Water Distressing Technique ~

I have been doing this technique for quite awhile and I have been asked by a few people how I do it, so I thought I would throw together a quick tutorial that shows how easy it really is. Here is what you need:


1) Distress Ink of Your Choice
2) Q-Tip
3) Paper You Plan to Distress
4) Glass of Water
5) Distressing Tool

This piece of patterned paper I am using is part of a layout I just did which is also featured in the bottom of this post. Use your distressing tool of choice along all sides of your paper. Don't be gentle and if it tears a little that is a good thing in my book.

Ink your edges all over and don't be afraid to get crazy with it. Wipe some of the ink on top of the paper. Perfect isn't a word that fits into distressing.

Now take your Q-tip and saturate it in the water. Run your Q-tip along the edges of your paper and onto the top as well to spread the coloring around. Again no need for perfection, just let the water run here and there and saturate the edges as best you can by dipping the Q-tip in often.

Now start going around the edges of the paper, while it's still wet, and curl up and make small tears. To speed up the process of drying you can take a heat tool to your paper.

Here is my finished piece. The water really helps blend the inked edges in to the paper.
Here is the layout I used that piece of paper on. I call this "Speechless". I used an altered photo of Brooklyn. All of my layers of paper were distressed using my water technique, some more than others. This layout was used with items from the June Swirlydoos kit.


This is a close-up of some of the embellishments. The frame and clock are both Dusty Attic pieces. I inked over the tops of each one. The flowers are my torn apart Primas that I showed in my last post.

Here are my Prima centers and a couple of butterflies I cut out from some of the patterned paper in the kit.


Check out these gorgeous beads!! Also the rub on below came with the kit and I used that to get my title from. I distressed it a bit as well by being a little rough when applying.

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!!

13 comments:

  1. You are awesome Mandy!! Thank you so much for sharing your technique!!!!Love it!!!

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  2. Gorgeous lo!! I love it!! love what you did with the kit!!!!!

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  3. Thank you so much for sharing!! I just got some dusty attic stuff in the mail and can't wait to "attempt" a beautiful page like yours!~

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  4. Wow Mandy ...really love this technique and will definitely be giving it a try. thank you so much for sharing!!!

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  5. Gorgeous layout. Great little tute!

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  6. This awesome, Mandy! I'm going to an all day crop on Saturday and I think I will be bringing along some QTips!! Thanks for sharing!!!

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  7. Mandy, thanks for the tip (pun intended)!!!!
    Beyond gorgeous LO, btw!!!!!!!!!

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  8. :) thanks for sharing this, and for the kind comment on my post. Have a great weekend!

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  9. This is gorgeous Mandy! I have GOT to get my hands on some of those die-cuts. :) Beautiful work!

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  10. Mandy this is such a beautiful layout!! I love your work! You do a fantastic job! Thanks for sharing your talent with us!!

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  11. awesome technique! I used it today and love the results! Thanks for sharing!

    http://amadrian8.blogspot.com/

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  12. TYVM for the cool tip! Your LO is just SUPER GORGEOUS :-))

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