Distress Oxide Inks in my Bible - by Sarah Anderson

Oh my!  I've been converted to prepping my pages!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yes, that statement does merit that many exclamation marks!  I am not a prepper; I am a dive in and see what happens kind of girl.

So how did this happen?

Well, I adore inky splodginess.  It makes my insides all happy!  And I recently got my hands on some of the new Distress Oxide inks from Ranger.  These are a combination of pigment and dye ink so when you add water, they react in a different way to any other inks, and they dry with a wonderful chalky finish.

I have played and played with them in my journals but they are made up of watercolour paper, which is happy with lots of water being splooshed around.

Bible pages, on the other hand, are rather on the thin side, to say the least!!

I trialled the inks in the first pages of my bible, by using a cosmetic sponge to add the ink to the page, then spritzing them with water to create the unique oxide effects. [The top splodge is normal distress ink, with the distress oxide below it.]  I then pressed the distress oxide ink pad onto an acrylic block, spritzed with water and printed with it on top of the inked area.
 

                                                             reverse side - some bleedthrough

I think it was Claire who said recently that she prepped her page with Matt Medium, something I use as a glue, so I had a go with this in my bible

                                                                                and look, no bleedthrough where the Matt Medium was!!

Then I thought I really ought to use some Clear Gesso as someone would want to know if it worked with that too

                                    and yes it did!!

So I duly prepped my page with Dina Wakley Clear Gesso 

and let it dry whilst I gathered an inkpad, spray bottle and acrylic block.

I smooshed the inkpad onto the block

spritzed it with water

then pressed it down onto my bible page.  I manage to get the page quite wet and a bit of the colour went on the other side of the page, but I'm ok with that!

I spritzed it with water as I dried it with a heat gun, then repeated the printing with the acrylic block, again spritzing with water as I heat dried it.  Just look at those gorgeous inky marks ...

..and that's just with one colour of inkpad!

I stamped the word 'Jesus', from the Illustrated Faith Names of God set, using Faded Jeans Distress Oxide, then sprayed it with water as I heat dried it to see what happened.  What happened was the ink drifted so much you can't tell I stamped a word at all!  But it still looks pretty and makes me happy inside.

 I love this effect so much I think I'll add it to pages and leave them like that!  Today though I added a verse that really spoke to me as I was looking up a different verse from the same chapter from Sunday's talk in church.

It's a verse you'll be familiar with as

"For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid,

but gives us power, love and self-discipline"

2 Timothy 1:7 NIV UK

but I read it in The Mirror, a paraphrase by Francois du Toit and it really spoke to me.  I know first hand how debilitating it is to have a mind that is full of anxious thoughts, bound in fear.  It is a conscious choice to change that thinking and choose to fill my head with the truths from God's word (something I've been really focusing on these past couple of weeks as I go through a really tricky time) but it makes a huge, huge difference!!  And it's so easy once you start.

His truths liberate my mind, setting it free from fear.  Sometimes I've had to sing those truths very loudly in my car, and sometimes I wake up with those songs going through my head (look up Godfrey Birtill's songs, they are full of fabulous truth!)  Amazing peace follows and it's possible to keep going through what is a tough time.






And for those who are keen to know...

 this is the other side of the page!  I accidentally printed some of the green on here which is why it looks like it has more bleedthrough than it does.  And I think the blue is because I didn't quite cover the whole area with gesso!

And the little heart?  They were made by pressing the Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide pad down on a sheet of deli paper, spritzing it with water as I dried it with a heat gun

..then punching out a heart shape etc