Tutorial - Inking Tools

Using Distress Inks is becoming much more popular among paper crafters. It adds color, makes pages look weathered and worn, and just adds overall interest to paper crafts.

I have a lot of Distress Inks, and use them on almost every craft piece that I create. The ink blending tools that were created by Tim Holtz are the best way to use the inks, but they can be quite expensive. My local papercraft store sells them for around $7-$8 each. I prefer to have one blending tool for each color because it's just easier to switch between colors rather than change the blending pad every time you want to change colors. 

So I decided to make my own, and this was very easy and inexpensive.

This is what I used:

- Piece of Pine (1.2m x 49mm x 19mm)
- Sheets of Craft Foam
- Velcro (Hook Only)
- Glossy Accents

This is what they look like when finished.......

Just basic looking and a little rough, but great for my own personal use. You will notice that the Tim Holtz blending tools have a handle on them and the ones I have made don't, well I don't hold them by the handle anyway so not having one on the blending tools works for me.

Here is a step by step of how I made them:

1 & 2 - Using my partner's mitre box, ( I was the first to use it, it still had all the packaging on it!) I cut the wood into 1 1/8th inch blocks. After getting a good work out on my right arm from all that manual sawing, I then gently sanded all the edges to both take any sharpness away and to remove any splinters from sawing.

3 - Cut the craft foam into pieces slightly smaller than the wooden blocks and glue them to the blocks (I used glossy accents to adhere the foam to the block but any ind of glue that won't dissolve the foam will do). Then cut the velcro to the same size as the craft foam and adhere this to the foam ( I used self adhesive velcro but again any adhesive that won't dissolve the foam will work).

4 - Attach your blending foam pad and presto finished! I downloaded the labels from the Ranger website and used my Xyron sticker thing to stick the labels to the blocks.

NOTE: The foam pads are slightly larger than the blocks but I don't find that an issue. I took my measurements for the wooden blocks from Ranger Ink Blending Tools.

All up I got about 20 ink blending tools from that length of wood. And my total cost was approximately $10, can't argue with that now can we......... 

Well that's about it from me for today............ I think that I have gone on long enough!

N.B. No copyright infringement intended - I have tried to make the blocks as little like the original's as possible, this shape is just the easiest to handle for me.