We’ve added Distress Oxide™ inkpads to our ink line-up not too long ago, and today we’ve got a few ideas to show you on how to use them!
Hopefully you’ve all had a chance to experiment with these fun reactive inks and, in the process, discovered a few techniques and ideas of your very own. If you haven’t, we are here to help! Regardless of where you are in your Distress Oxide™ journey, follow along as our Creative Arts Manager, Karen Pedersen, dives into five gorgeous techniques below!
Reacting with a Shimmer Brush Emboss your image and color with Distress Oxide™ inks. With a Clear Shimmer Brush, go over some of the inked areas, removing ink and adding shimmer as you go.
Watercolor Wash Load your watercolor paper with water, to the point where it is sitting on top of the paper and not fully absorbing. Spread the Distress Oxide™ ink colors that you wish to use for your background onto your all-purpose mat. With a waterbrush, pick up the colors, one at a time, and add it to the sitting water on the watercolor paper. The colors will blend and bleed into one another.
An Ombré Effect with One Ink Pad With just one Distress Oxide ink pad, create and ombré effect by applying the ink with different amounts of pressure (more for a darker tone, and less for a lighter tone). Blend these tones seamlessly with a mini ink blending tool.
Tone-on-Tone Stenciling Apply the background Distress Oxide™ ink colors and blend them into each other with a mini ink blending tool. Lay a stencil on top and add a second layer of color through the stencil. Apply more pressure, and more ink, for the stenciled image to appear darker and to achieve a more dramatic effect.
What are some fun ways you are using your Distress Oxide™ inks? Let’s share ideas in the comments below!
Celebrate the men who mean the most in your life with our exclusive Legendary Father’s Day stamp sets! The Someone to Look up To and Legendary Father’s Day sets will honor these important men in a “dapper” mixed with just the appropriate amount of “cute” way.
By pairing these legendary stamp sets with a few fun stamping and coloring techniques we were able to achieve some rather handsome results.
In the cards above, we used coloring pencils to add details to the hat on the left and the tie on the right. The filling of the shaker window is a mix made up of gold loose sequins and Sapphire cardstock confetti shapes cut using the Shaker Window & Confetti Thin Cuts (see how we used the leftover negative of the star confetti in a separate card, below). The shoes of the card on the left were stamped in VersaMark™ ink and heat embossed using clear embossing powder to create a textured patterned background.
Heat embossing with white embossing powder was used to achieve the raised white sentiment on this other card, above, and shading with color pencils was once again used on the shirt of the card on the left, to create a more dimensional image.
If you’d like to learn how to achieve the beautiful color pencil shading we’ve shown you in a couple of these cards, follow along with Karen, our Creative Arts Manager, in the video below. She explains how to determine where and how to add your shading based on your “light source” and so much more!
Lastly, we promised you scrapbook pages and we are delivering!
For all of our scrappers out there, these gorgeous stamp sets are easily adaptable to pages and layouts, as well! Here you see that we’ve created a 6″ x 8″ page and a 12″ x 12″ page using both of the Father’s Day stamp sets. The large sentiment from the Someone To Look up To stamp set lends itself well as a title while the smaller icons of the Legendary Father’s Day stamp set add a touch of gallant charm to your memories.
Father’s Day is less than three weeks away! Prepare those meaningful cards and pages, today, and make Father’s Day unforgettable this year!
Here at Close To My Heart, we know that the Christmas season is a time for celebration! This week, we had our annual Christmas party here at the Home Office. It’s always such a pleasure to gather together as friends and coworkers, relax, and spread some Christmas cheer.First came a lunch catered by Tucanos Brazilian Grill, and boy, was it tasty! We enjoyed our meal with Christmas music in the background and icicle-style lights above our heads.
After the food, we celebrated employee birthdays and longevity milestones. We applauded people who have been with us for five, ten, fifteen, and even twenty years! The loyalty of our employees to this company always fills us with gratitude.But the party wasn’t over. Next, Monica and Brian began drawing names and giving out fabulous prizes to the lucky winners! By the time they’d finished, dozens of gifts had been handed out, which certainly upped the merriment!Does everyone look happy or what? We hope each of you get to enjoy your own holiday festivities and that you feel like you are a part of ours—because we know that we wouldn’t be celebrating together if it weren’t for this wonderful Close To My Heart community. Get in on the fun by checking out our holiday video, and Merry Christmas from Close To My Heart!
With the reveal of our new idea books, I’ve been feeling especially sentimental toward this company and all it stands for. My wish is that these books will become something you cherish and return to again and again throughout the coming year. As we do with all of our products, we’ve put our hearts and souls into these books, and I hope you can feel it. I know that when I flip through these crisp, colorful pages, I’m filled with a resurgence of why I work so hard to do what I do.
Why am I so passionate about what I do? I know I’ve been asked that question on more than one occasion, and I’m sure our Consultants have as well. To answer it, we released a video that explains the “why” of Close To My Heart. Please take a moment to watch this video that has become so very dear to me.
Isn’t that beautiful? I also believe life is worth sharing—the laughter and the tears that make up life’s cherished moments and become precious memories. And what better way to share these beautiful bits of life than through memory keeping?
I know that this video will resonate with many of you who share my passion for preserving memories. If it does, I invite you to join me in my mission to promote this wonderful method of memory keeping by becoming a Close To My Heart Consultant. Now is a great time to take that leap! As of August 1, all new Consultants will receive a beautiful, redesigned New Consultant Kit*, which you can see below. This kit will give you all the necessities to get your Close To My Heart business up and running. You already have the passion and the skill for making and preserving memories—now it’s time to put it to work in a new way by becoming a Close To My Heart Consultant! Becoming a Close To My Heart Consultant is more than choosing a career path. When you join our wonderful company, you join a family.
For those of you who are already with us, thank you for making this company extraordinary. Thank you for the years of dedication you’ve already given and the years of dedication to come.
I hope that each of you who share my love for beautiful artwork and memory keeping will share this touching video. Email it to your family, tweet it to your followers, post it to Facebook, Instagram, and your blog. Let them know why you are passionate about what you do.
I can’t wait to see what this next chapter at Close To My Heart holds for all of us!
Does everyone look happy or what? We hope each of you get to enjoy your own holiday festivities and that you feel like you are a part of ours—because we know that we wouldn’t be celebrating together if it weren’t for this wonderful Close To My Heart community. Get in on the fun by checking out our holiday video, and Merry Christmas from Close To My Heart!
