Distress Ink Watercoloring with Simon Says Stamp + SALE!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! I am back today with another purple card, this time watercolored using Tim Holtz Distress Inks. Did you know that Tim Holtz’s Distress product line has been around for twenty years?? Isn’t that amazing? To celebrate Tim’s incredible creativity and the sheer volume of creative energy he and his products bring to the crafting community, Simon Says Stamp is celebrating the Distress product line throughout the entire year of 2024 with sales and giveaways! This month’s focus is the OG: Distress Inks. These inks can be used for so many different purposes, but my favorite way to use them is watercoloring. I love my fancy watercolors, for sure, but the color palette on the Distress Ink line is absolutely divine and makes color selection so easy without having to worry about mixing to create custom colors and running out. I paired Distress Inks with an older-but-still-gorgeous embossing folder for today’s purple project, so let’s get started with the details!

To start my project, I ran a panel of Distress A2 Watercolor Paper through my die cutting machine using the beautiful Free Falling Floral Embossing Folder. The super sturdy and bright white Distress Watercolor Paper holds up beautifully with embossing folders, and you can use either the textured or smooth side! After I had embossed the panel with the pretty floral pattern, I used Shaded Lilac, Wilted Violet, Villainous Potion, Bundled Sage, Iced Spruce, and Pine Needles Distress Inks to watercolor the flowers. When watercoloring with Distress Inks, I like to tap the mini ink pads onto a palette (I have a beautiful ceramic palette for this purpose) and then pick up the color with my damp paintbrush. Picking up the color from the palette with the paintbrush allows me to control the level of intensity for the color, which helps me to achieve those deep shadows as well as the crisp, light highlights.

When watercoloring embossing folder images, I treat it like I would any no-line watercoloring: keep the wet sections separate. Working in sections allows the wet spots to dry and retain their crisp edges and high contrast when working with the area immediately adjacent. After I had finished watercoloring the images, I did go back in with some white gouache to tidy up some of the edges of the petals and add some brighter highlights on the leaves. I also added some sparkling glitter watercolors to the flower centers for added luxury and textural interest!

For the greeting, I die cut the detail layer of the Simple Hello die from some champagne-colored Luxe Glitter Classic Assortment Cardstock and the shadow layer from vellum, adhering the two with liquid adhesive and added some thin strips of clear dimensional adhesive on the back. I also used a sentiment from the Birthday Mail sentiment card set, which I had foiled using Simon Says Stamp Rose Gold Deco Foil and my Minc machine. I popped up the sentiment strip with some foam squares, then added a few lavender-blue gems for added sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today! Now, for the SALE information!!!

Simon Says Stamp is offering 20% off on Distress Inks throughout the month of June 2024!! This includes Oxides and reinkers, so if you’ve been wanting to stock up on reinkers or if there are colors you’ve missed, this is an excellent opportunity. Simply add the items included in the sale to your cart, then use code DSTR20 to take 20% off! You can click HERE to see everything included in the sale!

I have one more project with a purple theme to share with you, so stay tuned later this week. 🙂 Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!