Distress Oxides vs Distress Inks: Galaxy Background feat Craftin Desert Divas Space Cadet and Ahoey Matey digital stamps

I knew I wanted to make a galaxy background, and I thought it would be interesting to compare what kind of looks are achieved using Distress Oxides and Distress Inks. So I ended up creating two cards, and you can already see in the pictures how different those backgrounds are! I think they both look beautiful! So let’s have a look at how I made these cards!

As a first step I printed my images on some Neenah Solar White cardstock, cut them using my Silhouette Portrait, and I colored them in with my Spectrum Noir markers. I altered the pirate image from the Ahoy Matey digital stamp, and with just a few touches I turned him into a space  pirate! First I drew a helmet for the cat and one for the pirate, and then I colored the ship and the sails using some cool greys to make them look as if they were made out of metal. I also added some line and dot detail to create the appearance of metal parts and bolts on the sails and on the ship body. As a final step I added highlights with my Uniball Signo white gel pen. I wish I had filmed this part too, but I hope you get the general idea – and if you are interested I could always film a separate video for that!

Once the images were colored I moved on to my background. I cut two pieces of Strathmore Bristol Smooth cardstock to 4 1/4″ by 5 1/2″; I used this particular cardstock because Distress Inks and Oxides blend really smoothly on it – it makes the job so much easier! For a “fair” comparison I decided to use the same colors for the Oxides and the Inks: I chose Black Sooth, Faded Jeans, Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet and Peacock Feathers. 

To create the galaxy background I proceded as follows for both card bases: I put down some Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet and Peacock Feathers in different areas of my base, without being too careful at this stage about getting a nice blend. In this phase I just wanted to block in the areas where these colors will show in my galaxy. I then added Faded Jeans all around the edges and in the areas that were still empty, trying to blend it with the other colors. I then repeated the same step with the Black Sooth, which I also very lightly blended on top of the colorful areas to darken them a little bit. To add the stars I used some white acrylic paint: I diluted it with some water and used first an old toothbrush to create smaller stars, and then a paintbrush to create some larger stars. I also added some stars using the silver color in the Gansai Tambi palette for some subtle shine. 

Once everything was dry, I cut down my backgrounds using the largest die in the Crazy Stitched  Frame Dies set, and I glued them down to some Core’dinations black cardstock cut at a standard A2 size.

I then used my Tonic Studios Guillotine Trimmer to cut one of the two sentiment banners, and for the other I used one of the dies in the Flag Banner set. 

To finish the card I adhered the sentiments and the images in place using Tombow Mono Multi glue and my Tonic Studios Funky Tape Runner. 

And here you can see pictures of the two cards. The one with the Distress Inks:

and the one with the Oxide Inks:

Which one is your favorite?

I filmed a video for this card focused on the galaxy backgrounds, that you can watch on my YouTube channel by clicking on this link

Distress Oxide – Peacock Feathers