Tips & Techniques Thursday: Distress Stains & Stickles

Hey Stickle-lovers! Today we are SUPER excited to feature an amazing blogger and crafter, DoBea from Plum Poppy Studio. She has an AWESOME tutorial using Rock Candy Distress Stickles with you today! Hope you enjoy as much we we did. :)

First off, I am so excited to be Guest Designing for the All that Stickles blog today! I feel honored that these sweet ladies contacted me about the following tutorial, especially since I think it is such a fun one.

In order to get ready for this technique, I started off gathering all of the supplies that I was going to need for this project:

Ornaments stamp set {I like to used open stamps without much detail.}

Watercolor paper

Distress Stains {Weathered Wood, Stormy Sky, Faded Jeans}

Broad Nib Water Brush

Fine Detail Nib Water Brush

Archival Ink {Will not bleed when used with water}

Rock Candy Distress Stickles

Ink Palette

I then went on to get my ink palette ready to work with:

I try not to have too much water on my water brushes, as it can get soupy real fast:

The first color I used was Weathered Wood. I used the wider flat water brush and dipped it into the palette where I hold small amounts of my Distress Stains. I then filled the body of the long ornament in completely.

Next, I then used the same brush dipped in Stormy Sky and filled in slightly more than half of the ornament:

And then with Faded Jeans, I filled in about one third of the ornament.

Next, I used the smaller tipped water brush with a very small amount of Black Soot to give it a grey top and bottom of the ornament.

Here is a look at the filled in ornament before the Stickles:

After the paper was dry {helped along with the Heat It tool}, I squeezed out a bit of Rock Candy Distress Stickles onto the darker part of the ornament:

And then spread it around with my finger a bit:

Once the Rock Candy was dry, I cut out the ornament and attached it to my card.

And viola!! A watercolored look to a Christmas card!

Here is a closer look at the Rock Candy:

And a couple more cards using this technique:

Thanks so much for letting me share this fun technique with you!

DoBea