Mixing Paper and Water with Theresa!

Paper and water?  Usually a recipe for disaster, right?  Well, yeah.  Sometimes.  Maybe most of the time.  Even if you are going for brilliance... but that's a story for a little later.  *wink*

This whole tutorial is all about "going with it" or, more accurately "trying to figure out how the heck to recover from the really big error you just made with that paint/ink that glopped out all over the place."

Here's the first error.  I mean, masterpiece.  Oh, heck, I was panicking.  I admit it!

"The Wine Expert?" started off without the white paint, but had too much color and pattern going on - I wanted the focal point to be the picture (well, the wine bottle, actually).

Adding some white paint to tone it down was the plan.  It actually sort of accidentally turned out artsy and fun like I was hoping it might.  But I learned some things the hard way...

I started painting on some white paint and realized it was old and lumpy.  And gross.  And pretty much wrecked what I had going.  So I thought... "This is thick paper - I'm gonna go scrub it off!"  This is a picture of what it looked like after I scrubbed it in the bathroom sink.  Imagine also paint all over my hands and somehow on my forehead.

I walked away and let it dry overnight.  And then discovered I liked it, but it was too light.  So I grabbed some white stain and daubed it all over.  Oh yikes.  That's not looking good!

Squirt bottle of water to the rescue!  I got it good and wet and let it run all over... onto the good bathroom towel I grabbed the night before.  Oops.  Good thing I do the laundry around here!

So it ended up turning out with a lot of panic.  Maybe I should have, oh, I don't know... tried it on some scraps before I had a major disaster on my hands?  Yeah, that's what I should have done.

Too bad I don't listen to myself.  *insert laughter here*

I had successfully used a water/ink/grunge technique on this layout (it's the stripe print):

So I thought I would do the same with another piece for a card, but this time actually take pictures along the way and make it better and bolder!

A piece of paper heavily distressed and torn.  On a really crappy old towel.  See, I did learn something!

Thorough soaking courtesy of the squirt bottle (the dog hid downstairs during this step).

Crumpled up.

Un-crumpled.  At this point I should have just done what my CTMH consultant recommended years back:  iron it and love it just like this.  But noooooooo, I had to push it just a little too far.

Uh, yeah.  Does it look like I shot this paper?  I don't know why I thought brick red distress stain would look good, but I did.  I tried lots and lots of things and ended up just throwing this away (and staining my towel red).  Lesson learned... know when to stop and/or practice first!

Actually, the most important thing is a lesson I learned from my mother-in-law (who is an amazing artist, by the way):  there are many ways to wreck paper.  And it is *just paper.*  Turn it over or throw it away, there's always more. 

So try something artsy or outside your comfort zone.  And maybe practice a little.  And maybe don't reach for that brick red distress stain, okay?

- Theresa/Savi