Distressed Trees

Greetings! Today I have the first of 3 cards that uses the new Pine Tree Stencils from A Colorful Life Designs. This card uses the Pine Tree Duo, and I really love how it came out. I used a technique I came up with a few months ago, and it worked perfectly on these trees.

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The technique is pretty simple, and looks like a total hot mess at first, but then you get such cool results! I plan on doing a YouTube video for it soon, so be on the lookout. Basically, you ink up the back of the stencil with the water-reactive inks of your choice. I use Distress Inks, but if you have another brand, it’ll work fine if it reacts with water. I used Rustic Wilderness and Walnut Stain on the Pine Tree Duo. I tried to be mindful as to where the inks were getting placed, and once I was satisfied with the amount of ink that was on the stencil, I spritzed it generously with water.

I carefully flipped the wet stencil on to watercolor cardstock and rubbed the stencil with my fingers to make sure I had good contact. Since the stencils are translucent, you can see what areas could use a bit more rubbing. I set it off to dry, and once it was done, I placed my cleaned stencil on top again, and inked the sky with Chipped Sapphire and Salty Ocean Distress Ink. Since the format of this stencil is slimline, I went with it and created an ivory colored card base, and inked the edges with more Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

I seriously love that the whole thing looks distressed and imperfect. I love the different splotches of color, and how the inks bleed into each other. I will have another project similar to this one soon, but with different colors and another stencil. Would you like to see this technique in a video? Let me know in the comments. Have you visited A Colorful Life Designs lately? I encourage you to give them a visit. You can use my code, “AlFan10” to get 10% off of your purchases, excluding Master Bundles. Thanks for stopping by. Have an inspiring day!