Distress Paints - Doin' the Holtz effect

That cool thing Tim Holtz does with distress paint and a mini spritzer by Miss Crafter

We all know Tim Holtz is a star crafter! Have you ever tried that little thing he does in videos with the distress paints splurged on some plastic then sqwuigging (my word but you can use it) them onto a tag and voila it looks fantastic. Well I thought I would give it a go. Some new distress paint colours have become available at Scotties. I grabbed a few colours for myself to play with but I'm not sure if any of the ones I got are the new shades. They are all new to me though and  I love them. So much less messy than paint tubes and you don't end up with wasted blobs of paint.

Step one: Find yourself some type of plastic surface. I usually use icecream container lids for my palettes but this was the plastic sleave from a gift box.

Trying out the Tim Holtz effect with distress paints 

Step two: Splurge some paint from several different colours in close proximity on the plastic surface. Then spritz the surface of the paints with a little water from a mini spritzer.

Distress Paint being spritzed on a plastic surface with mini sprtizer

Tim Holtz distress paints and a blank journal card meet

Step three: Take a blank journal card or gift tag (or whatever paper or card stock you like really) and sqwuige and wiggle it around face down on the wet paint. Wiggle enough to get the colours slightly overlapping but not so much as to create a muddy single colour.

Ranger Mini Spritzer used on distress paints 

Step four: Turn the paper over and spritz with a Tim Holtz Spritzer. Enough that the colours run a little together and get some interesting watercolour effects but not enough that they run altogether and off the paper into a runny mess.

Step five: Either leave to dry naturally or use a heat gun to get it to set before too much running occurs thus preserving the most interesting pattern achieved in the few moments after the water wicks the paint a little across the page.

Distress paint bottles lined up next to the penultamate result. Watch this space.

Ok so it looked a little better than this after it dried and I don't have the photo to prove it yet. For some reason I forgot to photograph the end result in both cases but I will update this post when I do. Below is the step by step process again with a craft tag, once again failure to photograph end result, doh! But it looked quite cool once I did a second layer of sqwuigging and stenciled and stamped, building up the layers ala holtz himself.

Blog update: This just in. I have now posted this photo below of the final result. It looks a little different when it drys. I would probably add some more layers to this before using it in a spread but I might need to go shopping for some new stencils first. Hmmmm...

Final result Becky Higgins blank journal card with Tim Holtz paint effect and misted spray.

Step by step tutorial on Tim Holtz distress paint effect used on crafters tag.

Final result Tim Holtz layered paint effect, stenciling and stamping on crafters tag.

This tutorial by Miss Crafter of Crafterlala