Artiste "Distress-Style" Markers!

These are just fabulous! This is the gorgeous new range of markers from Artiste. They work pretty much like Distress Markers, and there are so many techniques you can do. First off, you can just colour a stamped image, but you can also use them as watercolours. You can blend them using just water, and like distress markers, the colours will stay true. So if you try to blend two colours of pink, you end up with two shades of pink, not muddy brown! The colours themselves really are stunning, there's a Vintage set, a Pastels set and a Brights set. Personally, I'd recommend Vintage or Pastels...just yummy colours!

One of the coolest things these markers do is stamping! Here I'm using a gorgeous Henbury Lane limited edition floral watering can rubber stamp, the Vintage set of Artiste Markers, and that lovely Payperbox Premium White stamping card.

First off, I'm turning my stamp upside down and colouring direct to the rubber. Take your time and don't worry about the markers drying, they take a really long time to dry anyway, but you can "reactivate" the ink.

One really fun thing you can do is overlap colours. So here, I've coloured the rose petals in a light pink and I'm adding detail over the top in a darker violet. This gives a lovely effect once stamped.

So this is my finished coloured stamp:

Next, I'm going to "reactivate" the ink by misting on a little water from my mini-mister. The best way to do this is actually to squirt a bit of water into the air and wave your stamp through it.

Now you're ready to stamp! And this is the stunning result:

Gorgeous isn't it? I just love that effect!

The stamp in the photo is the one I've just stamped with, and you can take it one stage further and stamp it again! Don't re-colour, just re-mist and re-stamp. You'll get what's called a "second-generation image", a really nice, soft, lighter version of the first image that looks like this:

Now, you could just leave these alone, and they do look fabulous just as they are, but Artiste Markers are water reactive, just like distress inks. What that means is you can blend! Just use either a wet paintbrush or a waterbrush and just water and scribble over the image to drag the colour out:

And this is the end result:

Lovely!

Definitely loving the new Artist Markers! And they really do go perfectly with the wonderfully pretty Henbury Lane Wooden Stamps.

Artiste Markers are RRP £14.99 for 12, Henbury Lane Stamp RRP £4.99, Mini Mister RRP £1.45 and pack of 3 Water Brushes RRP £3.99

This is one of the stunning cards we made at a recent workshop using this technique. So proud of this card! Really does look fabulous when it's done!