Just Stain It at A Vintage Journey

Hi everyone and whoopie!!! We've made it through to the end of another week and I hope it's been a good one for you. It's my turn to take over hosting duties for a new challenge over at A Vintage Journey and the theme I've chosen is... 'Just Stain It'.

Distress Stains are the best way of getting your favourite Distress Ink colours in liquid form without losing their intensity. That makes them ideal for staining flat surfaces/edges and crackled surfaces, painting, dripping, splatting and so much more. Show us what you can do with your Distress Stains by creating a Tim Holtz inspired piece to be in with a chance of winning at A Vintage Journey.

Those of you who know my friend and fellow team mate Anne will be well aware how talented and imaginative she is, so a present for my 'birthday twin' had to be out of the top drawer. This Eileen Hull Mini Album has been cleverly designed to make it a great size and easy to put together. The dilemma (as always) was how to decorate it so, along with many other Tim Holtz products, I delved back through time to the class some of us in the UK were lucky enough to take with Tim last year and figured Distress Stains were definitely the way to go.

The album cover itself was covered in Eclectic Elements fabric, linen ribbon and altered metallic corners. You'll see on the front cover a 'Paula Cheney' jumbo flower, coloured with a mix of Fired Brick, Antique Linen and Brushed Corduroy Distress Stains. Having dipped, creased and inked the bloom I used the same mix for colouring some seam binding, and (with the addition of Tarnished Brass DS) some jumbo leaves. Finally a Ruler Ribbon belt was added to secure the album.

Now for those pages which, as you can see, are secured using elastic bands. It means they can very easily be slipped in and out of the album to add further embellishments and move around. And of course you can add extra pages, tags, ephemera just by using extra elastic bands (don't worry, I included a supply of matching ones in Anne's parcel!)

I'm sure I can't be the only one that looks and a set of pages and thinks "where do I start?" but as mentioned previously, I took inspiration from Tim's 'Journeys of the Past' class, though this time with a twist. I stamped each of the pages using Distress Paints and various images before reaching for the same Distress Stains previously used on the flower. The pages were then dragged, dipped and dried with a few added stain splats for good measure. A little extra inking around the edges and through some stencils with the coordinating Distress Inks and suddenly it all felt much better - no blank spaces to be seen! I also used the Tarnished Brass Distress Stain through Tim's Splatters stencil for some added bling.

The idea was to add enough decoration to each page to make them look interesting whilst leaving room for Anne to add her own pictures and ephemera. Die cuts are always great and it was great to use some of Tim's mini stamps in combination with Black Archival Ink. You'll also spot some Remnant Rub-ons and Tissue Tape, particularly useful for protecting the spines of each set of pages.

For those who might be wondering the album is just over 5" square so it's a great size. And hopefully you can see from this that Distress Stains are a fantastic way of getting lots of intense colour on a large space at record speed. What's not to love about that?!

Please make sure you hop over to see what my talented teamies have been up to with their Distress Stains to help get your mojos humming, then link up your own projects at A Vintage Journey to be in with a chance of winning.
Have a great weekend and take care of yourselves, Jenny xxx

From Country View Crafts;

Tim Holtz Distress Products

Sizzix Products
Eileen Hull Mini Album