Oxide Inks with Glossy Photo Paper

Hi Everybody,

I can't tell you how many packs of glossy photo paper I have, 4x6 size.  For years I got a free pack when I bought ink for my printer but I never did anything with them.... until today.  If you have some, get it out and let's have some fun!  Glossy cardstock will work too.

I used the Tim Holtz Oxide Inks just like I did in my previous post and here's a LINK to it.  It shows how I put some down on my craft mat, placed my watercolor paper (which is what I was using at the time) in it and after a couple colors, heat set, and then same thing again either using same colors again but changing up the sides or using different colors.  I loved the results.  The inks blend so well, even better than the Distress Inks, which I love too.

Oxide Inks are a hybrid ink, meaning a combination so in this case, a combination of dye and pigment inks.  Tim Holtz Distress Inks (which we all know and love and now have all the minis too) are a water based dye ink and can be activated when sprayed with water.  You have to work a little bit harder to blend distress inks.  When you spritz the oxide inks that you put on your craft mat, you will immediately see the difference after it starts to oxidize.  It starts to look kind of pastel metallic and when it dries on your cardstock, it looks like a matte, chalk finish.  Dye inks are transluent and pigment inks are opaque so when you mix the two, you get that interesting chalk result.  You can stamp with these inks, use with stencils, etc, you can use them exactly how you did with the distress inks BUT you can use the oxide inks on any color cardstock.  They show up amazingly on black and kraft for example.  That's the extent of my Oxide Ink knowledge lol.  I've seen many people asking what Oxide Ink is so I wanted to go into that a little bit.

So after I got the ink on my glossy photo paper like I wanted it I let it dry completely.  I saw that even letting it dry naturally or with a heat gun, I could smear the ink a little.  Well, that's no good!  I was going to see about trying Gesso on it, etc., you will never believe what worked, the simplest thing... I used a very soft microfiber cloth and rubbed on the ink and the top layer rubbed off leaving an incredibly vibrant, shiny result.  I was doing the happy dance.  I had no idea this was supposed to be rubbed off.  Y'all might've already known this but I didn't so I was doing the new discovery dance :)

Here are 4 backgrounds I made on glossy photo paper. Each one may have taken a minute.  I'm serious, that's how fabulous this ink is.  It flows differently on this paper too.  Look at the bottom left one... It dripped down and I left a box for the sentiment ha!  

The bottom half is what it looked like after it dried.  Top half is what it looked like

 after I wiped it off with a towel.  Pretty!

This is what it looked like after I wiped off the entire piece of glossy photo paper.  

The left side is before I wiped off the ink, right side after.  See how vibrant that is!

This is a comparison between glossy photo paper (top) and watercolor/regular paper. 

 So if you want a matte, chalky result, don't use photo paper.  

I just wanted to share my experience so that you will have another option when you use your inks.  I am showing pics of mine and will make cards with them and do another blog post.

I hope I inspired you to pull out those unused packs of glossy photo paper.  I can make cards with these for years!

Watch for more blog posts in the next day or so.....

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!


Regina