Tim Holtz Distress Inks: 12 New Colors to Love!

When I first heard that Tim Holtz would be adding 12 new colors to his existing palette of 24 colors I cheered out loud and thanked the computer for giving me such great news. If this makes me a geek of the highest order - that's fine. They're that much fun to work with.

Since 2004, Distress Ink pads have been making my crafting life a better one, and it's a product I wouldn't consider working without. Not only are they great to work with, but the quality is outstanding as well. I have some of my original pads (purchased in 2004) that are still working just fine. Some have never been re-inked or replaced in all that time. In other words - they're a good investment!

Initially I was going to try and tell you which colors are my favorites from this batch but they're all too good. Wild Honey is a dark horse - a color I'd normally run away from, but I love how it looks on my projects. Victorian Velvet went on really dark, but lightens to a lovely shade. I'm also having a love affair with gray these days, so the addition of Pumice Stone is a welcome one. All twelve colors are now available, and working with them has been intensely fun.

These ink pads can be used as you would any regular ink pad, but they have added benefits. First off, when applied they have a slightly softer look than other inks. See this example of the image being stamped with the distress ink, and then a staz-on black pad:

You can see the difference. I love the softer look, and since I often don't stamp even enough, it covers my light or 'whoops' spots better. The ink pads can be used with water too - here's my sample board literally splashed with water-

Or you could stamp on already wet paper...

Another fun thing to do is to stamp on a craft mat, then add water to create a kind of wash.

Now you just press your paper down on it. Inexpensive photo paper is great for this. The look reminds me of Easter eggs, and you can mix-and-match various colors.

There is a lot more you can do with these ink pads, including stamping on photos. I strongly suggest checking out Tim Holtz at his website for more inspiration and ideas from a true master. If you've got the opportunity to take a class from him, I suggest that as well. I consider my class from him back in 2005 still the best class I ever took.

While getting funky and working with all kinds of fancy techniques is a lot of fun, sometimes I just like to use the ink pads as they are directly on my layouts and paper craft projects. They're beautiful for edging papers, and are even better rubbed on an embossed cardstock like this damask patterned one.

In the layout below I used Distress ink to edge my photos, to stamp, to edge the scallop paper & journaling paper, to accent the floral strip, to ink the flowers, and to color the background paper.  I used four colors in total - and I really like how much ink can add to my page.

Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Spun Sugar, Wild Honey, and Bundled Sage were used on this layout as well as one of Tim's stamps and filmstrip ribbon. Other supplies include American Crafts thickers uppercase and lowercase, pen, and cardstock; Melody Ross for GCD brad and flower strip, Prima Flowers, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, and a Pink Paislee rub-on.

I discovered that using the ink on the flower and spritzing it with a Glimmer Mist like Dazzling Diamonds resulted in a very pleasing effect much like water would have - except shiny. You can see how my once white flowers are a more all-over pink color.

I hope you've enjoyed my look at these twelve new awesome colors of distress ink. They truly do fill gaps that I hadn't realized I so desperately needed in my inking, and I feel so inspired to craft with them! You will be seeing many projects to come with these, and my stash of older colors as well.