Tutorial- Product Talk- Stampin Up Ink vs Distress Ink

This is an article I found while blog hopping....thought it was interesting enough to share....proves once again, the quality of Stampin' Up! products. 

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Theresa Miers

I thought it would be an interesting experiment to make two cards the same, one using Tim Holtz distress Inks and the other using Stampin’Up! Classic Ink. 

They are both dye inks, and they are the inks I use almost exclusively. 

The card is made using three different techniques, wrinkle free distress, direct-to-paper stamping and watercolouring and I used Stampin’Up! Whisper White cardstock.

Fisrt I did a colour selection from both brands so I could get the closest colour match for my experiment. In order of the photo, naming SU! first; PerfectPlum – DustyConcord, RidingHoodRed – FiredBrick, RegalRose – WornLipstick, PumpkinPie – SpicedMarmalade, MoreMustard – WildHoney, Old Olive – PeeledPaint.

I used the Wrinkle Free Distress Technique for the backgrounds. The top is made with Stampin’Up! Old Olive and More Mustard. The bottom on is made with Distress Ink Peeled Paint and Wild Honey. 

I was surprised at how well the Stampin’Up! inks worked using this technique. I was expecting a less intense colour and for the colours to mix more for a more ‘muddied’ colour blend, but the colours stayed bright and layered nicely. 

I added a ‘fingertip splash’ of plain water over the top to see what would happen, and both papers gave the same result with the whitish patches showing up. It maybe worth doing this technique again with more contrasting colours. I may have played it safe using closely related colours.

I should have photographed these two together, because despite taking the pics at the same time, they have a different cast of light. Anyways, here I have shown the Jumbo Peony by Stampendous, stamped with the two different inks. I was never overly fond of using Distress Inks for stamping crisp images, but this particular stamp lends itself well to using them since the image has a nice sketchy feel to the line work. 

A bit hard to tell from the photos but the Stampin’Up! impression is crisp with even colour, and the Distress impression has some fuzzy edges with a blotchy colour, but it doesn’t detract from the stamping.

Next I move onto the watercolouring. Both colours were easy to use, layer and blend using this technique. It’s hard to objectively say how they were different, but they did have a different ‘feel’ when it come to laying down the colour. The Distress Inks felt smooth, but they were both up to the job of giving me a pleasing and like-for-like look.

Next came the layering and shading with other colours. Both sets of inks were up to this job as well, giving me a watercolour look I was after. I liked the way the yellows from both layered brightly over the pink, and the purples blended when creating my shadows.

And this is what the finished cards look like side by side. I stamped the florish from the Jumbo Peony onto the background before the final assembly. So what do you think? Does one look better than the other? Can you tell that each is made with different types of ink? On these cards, using the techniques I have, I can’t see the difference. My initial purpose was to show how these inks were different, but it didn’t turn out that way, with this card.