Autumn Toadstools - Distress Archival Resist Technique

Fall. It's my favorite season. I adore the warm colors, the leaves, the pumpkins...and plaid.  And oh do I love the new Perfectly Plaid stamps from Tim Holtz and Stampers Anonymous.  They are perfect.  And I honestly couldn't be more in love with the way they turned out when I used them with a new technique that I learned from Tim Holtz this summer. 

Tim demonstrated this Distress Archival Resist technique at the Original Stamp Show in Carson in July.  I loved it and couldn't wait to experiment and see what color combos I could create. **Warning**this technique, like so many others, is totally addicting!

You need Alcohol Ink Cardstock for this technique. This is NOT Yupo. So please look very carefully when you are purchasing or ordering this product. I have linked it below for ease in ordering if you don't have any. Please be sure that you look carefully at what you purchase elsewhere so you get the cardstock that will work, and not the Yupo that will not work. Yupo is a nonporous surface for alcohol inks, and we are not using alcohol inks (it doesn't work with Oxides or water-resistant inks like Distress.) The Alcohol Ink Cardstock, on the other hand, is VERY porous and you can use all kinds of inks on it and it soaks the ink in quickly. We need a porous surface for the inks we are using.

Choose a stamp and ink it with your choice of Archival Ink colors. I chose Spiced Marmalade in fitting with the fall theme.

This is what it looked like when I stamped it the first time. You can see it isn't perfect coverage which I loved for this stamp and this technique. You may prefer something more bold and less distressed and if that is the case, ink it again and stamp until you get the coverage you want.

Then I didn't clean off the stamp, but I added some Barn Door Archival in areas with very splotchy coverage. I just wanted to add a little bit of a deeper fall coloring to the piece.

Once it was stamped, I decided that I wanted a bit more Spiced Marmalade, so I wiped my stamp, inked it with the orange and then stamped once again.

Now you can see there is a bit more color on this one. I dried it with a Heat Tool at this point just to be absolutely sure the ink was completely dry.

Now for the magic resist part. You need to pick a color of Distress Ink that is going to be your background color. Again, I wanted fall colors, but also to leave it open to the possibility of being used with Halloween, so I chose Black Soot.

Go directly onto the paper with the ink pad. I applied it to the cardstock in a circular motion.

To get it this dark, I went over the piece once and then immediately again to make sure it was a nice, dark background color. For the magic to happen, you need a soft, dry cloth, and then wipe the excess ink off the surface.

The Archival ink will resist the Distress Ink, but soak into the background where there is no Archival Ink to resist it. Isn't it amazing?

I really loved this color combination for the fall/Halloween theme, so I made a version using the exact colors and technique for each of the four new background stamps.

For this fall card, I thought the plaid paired beautifully with the toadstool stamps, so that's what I did.  I stamped the Specimen circle, the toadstools, and the sentiment in Black Soot Archival Ink onto Distress Mixed Media Heavystock. Then I used Distress Markers and a Detail Waterbrush to watercolor them.

I always feel that a little machine stitching finishes off a project perfectly.

As I said before, I really love this technique and I'm so glad Tim demoed it at Carson so I could learn it. I hope you are inspired to give this a try and I look forward to seeing some amazing Distress Archival Resist backgrounds.
Tami

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