Friendzy Friday at Two Scrapbook Friends.

Hello and Happy Friday! It's my turn for Friendzy Friday this week over on the Two Scrapbook Friends blog, so I thought I'd cover a little technique I use on most of my cards, using Distress Inks and Nestabilities.

Most of us use Nesties or similar dies on our cards or scrapbook pages to cut, but it's often forgotten that they can be used as stencils too. Most of the cards I make contain coloured images, and I use this technique on 90% of them. Not only does it look effective, it can stop the image 'floating' so to speak.

So first of all as previously mentioned, you'll need Distress Inks in the colour of your choice, a Nestabilitie/Sissix or similar die, and a Blending Tool. You can of course find all of these at the Two Scrapbook Friends store.



First lay your die over the image you are using on your card.....I tend to use a little sticky tape on the corners to keep things in place.




Ink up your Blending Tool with your chosen Distress Ink and using a circular motion, start to blend the colour into your framed image. It's quite useful to dab off any excess ink on a scrap piece of paper before you actually start to blend......you can always add more ink, but taking away can be a problem!




I've found also that it looks more effective if your 'inked' area is not too regimented........you need to loosely follow the outline of the image, leaving maybe half a centimeter of white space. I've drawn a dotted line on this view to show what I mean.



Once you've covered the whole area, remove the die and voila!



Don't forget you're sentiments too..........




Just remember not to rub the blending tool over the print as some inks, especially printer inks will smudge.

When you're feeling more adventurous, why not reach for other dies in your stash and experiment to create interest in your backgrounds such as hills or waves. Blue's work awesomely for skies, and as you can see here, I used a flower die........



to create clouds............



I do hope you'll give this technique a try the next time you reach for your dies, and don't forget to upload your creations to the gallery. We always love to see what you've been up to, but most importantly, have fun.

See you next time
Jayne.

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