Colouring with Distress Inks - Tips and Techniques

Hello lovely bloggers :)

There are a few people who have asked me how to colour with distress inks lately, so i'm hoping this might help.

I am not doing a full tutorial, as I don't think my colouring is anywhere near good enough to be telling people how to do it, but i have put together a few of my top tips and techiques which should help you, and i will put some links to a few tutorials by other people at the bottom of this post.

My post is mainly aimed at beginner distress inkers, but there might be a bit of something for everyone so have a quick look :D

You can either use the inkpads or the re-inkers for colouring. If you use the re-inkers, just put a few drops onto an acrylic block or pallete, and for inkpads, tap the pad onto an acrylic block to get the colour. Do not put your damp paintbrush straight onto the inkpad, as it will dilute it and ruin your pad.

I don't have the full set of distress inks. Infact, at the moment i only have 11 out of the 30+ (and before christmas i only had 7), but as long as you choose them carefully, you should be able to colour most things in the way you want.

My 8 top tips and techniques

1) You NEED to use a good quality, heavyish weight watercolour paper. When i first started colouring with my inks, i made the mistake of using a cheap watercolour paper, and as soon as you put water onto the image, the paper just tares up and makes a right mess. I can reccomend 'The Langton - Etrra Smooth (Hot Pressed), or a quality paper that is at least 250 gsm and smooth (preferably hot pressed (hp) should be ok.

2) If you can't afford the whole set of inks, or don't want to buy them all, buy just one of every colour group(one blue, one brown etc), as you can mix them or water them down to make them look very different. Before christmas, i only had one blue - Broken China, which is quite bright, so i coloured my image with Broken China, and then coloured over the top with Antique Linen to mute it slightly to match my papers.2) For skin colours, i reccomend Antique Linen, and Tattered Rose, and i used Victorian Velvet for cheeks. For a darker skin tone, Vintage Photo in the shadow areas looks quite good.

3) Make sure you stamp your image using a waterproof ink. I use Archival by Ranger in Tuxedo Black.

4) Only put a tiny bit of ink on your brush. You can always add more, but it's harder to remove extra ink.

5) Don't put too much water on your brush. I dip my brush in water, and then dab it on a tissue to remove an excess. Again, it is easier to put more on.

6) Start with the darker/shadow areas of your image, and work your way into the lighter bits. Keep cleaning your brush in the water and use small brush strokes or a circular motion to blend.

7) If you make a mistake or go outside the lines. Quickly blend the colour with a damp, clean brush to remove some ink, and keep doing this until it is gone/almost gone.

8) Always have a tissue on hand to dab your brush on or to remove water if you put too much on your image.

This was going to be a '10 top tips' thing, but i couldn't think of any more lol

Practice Makes Perfect! -I hate this saying, but with distress inks, it really does help.

If you are looking for a full, photo tutorial, please visit the lovely Hanna :)

Thanks for looking

Rachel xx