Creating Backgrounds Using Sprays Tutorial

Distress Oxide sprays are simply a spray form of the ever-popular Distress Oxide Ink. Just like the ink pads, they contain a mixture of dye and pigment properties, so they require a good shake before use to mix the two components together. The Oxide Spray allows you to get instant coverage of colour onto your card and they give you that gorgeous spray pattern that isn’t easily achieved when using an inkpad version.

You might be thinking, why can’t I just water down the Oxide re-inkers and use them as sprays? Adding water to the re-inker will make them oxidise, so you won’t get the same effect. The oxide sprays are in liquid form, but haven’t oxidised yet, so you can still get that look after initially colouring your background. If you’d used a watered-down re-inker you wouldn’t notice much of a pattern when doing the ghosting technique.

Spray inks can be rather messy, but don’t let that put you off, you can easily dip your brush into the bottle and paint with them, using them neat will allow the oxidation to still happen later on, or watering them down will give you an already oxidised background. You can also sprinkle salt on to the wet sprays, or scrunch up some cling film on top of the wet background to give some cool effects too.

In this masterclass I’ve tried to show a variety of different techniques that you can do with the Oxide Sprays. Starting with the more simple ideas, then moving on to some more multi-step techniques. But there are so many more ways of using them, so why not give some of these techniques a go, and who knows what else you might discover? How about mixing in some Nuvo Shimmer Powders or even some flat spray inks? The options are endless, but most importantly, have fun playing!