Tie Dyed Paper - Will it Work?

Hi Everyone, thanks for stopping by my blog today.

The challenge over at A Vintage Journey this week is Just Stain It using your distress stains. This product is fairly new to me but after getting my first bottle about 3 months ago I very quickly realised it to be a must in my craft room. I love how backgrounds turn out and the ease of colouring ribbon, flowers and die cuts makes it perfect for my style of craft.

After a couple of days of thinking about this challenge and looking at the DT 's samples and Tim's blog I realised that distress stains sometimes takes on a look of being tie dyed. Could I actually manage to tie dye a piece of paper with distress stains ? Maybe not but I was going to try.

I started off by wetting a piece of water colour paper and scrunching it up and tied with elastic bands and pressed my colour into the sections. But when I opened it up I realised my paper was too heavy to take the stain in every area. But using a lighter weight watercolour paper I felt would dissolve.

Next attempt, I lifted a piece of copy paper knowing this would just breakdown if I added water I decided to use my mix of Glycerine and water (1 part to 6) and sprayed on my paper on both sides. This softened the paper but didn't make it go extra limp. I then applied my bands and repeated process. It nearly worked but the paper had torn quite a bit with the bands.

So finally I repeated my process of the Glycerine, scrunching my paper from the centre but this time I tied a length of elastic band into the sections rather than wrapping round and round. I squeezed different colours of stain into my paper squeezing each section. I then cut my bands and unravelled the paper and dried with the heat gun. Yippee it worked and I love the effect.

I distressed the edges and then mounted my tie dyed paper onto black card stock and stained my flowers the way Tim shows you swiping my die cuts through the stains. My leaves I also added some texture from a stamp with Archival ink. My little metal embellishment was painted with distress ink and my ribbons were made from an old sheet ripped up and stained.

Well I hope you love the effect as much as I do and give it a go and I'd love to hear your comments on my card.

Happy crafting,

Julie x

Products used :

Sizzix tattered florals strip 

Cheery lynn DL278 horizon fishtail banners

Distress stains

I wish to enter this in to :

A Vintage Journey - Just Stain It Challenge