Multiple stampings with the M.I.S.T.I. and different distress ink techniques!

Advance warning, this post is a little photo-heavy!  After I posted this card last week, my mom requested a set of cards in a similar style; so, I decided to take the opportunity to show off my M.I.S.T.I. and also play with some different distress ink techniques!

For those who don’t know, M.I.S.T.I. stands for Most Incredible Stamp Tool Invented and it truly is a must-have for paper crafters!  It was created by Iliana of My Sweet Petunia and has quickly become the most in-demand crafting product around!  I was lucky enough to hear about it on the Splitcoaststampers forum in September and purchased mine in early October.  When she was still creating each one on her own she’d hold flash sales and sell whatever she had completed.  The night I purchased mine she sold 50 in less than 8 minutes!  Recently she’s started working with a manufacturer which has upped the number going out the door daily but there’s still quite the waiting list.  You can purchase them directly from her website or through Simon Says Stamp!

The M.I.S.T.I. really helps with the accuracy of your stamping.  I love my stamp press but I have a lot of problems getting it to line up exactly if I have to restamp something.  Using the M.I.S.T.I. there’s no guesswork…every stamping is as accurate as the last and it’s AMAZING!  It also makes stamping multiple cards a breeze!  I cannot recommend it highly enough!!

Here are two of the finished cards…I’ll show off the other two later!

I started off by trimming Tim Holtz watercolor paper down to 3 inch squares.  Then I laid a square down on the M.I.S.T.I. and moved the Hero Arts Night and Day Flowers stamp around until I had it in the position I wanted.  I closed the lid of the M.I.S.T.I. and that pressed the stamp onto the lid.  All I had to do was remember where I had placed the square of paper and I marked that on the grid paper with a pencil.  Because I wasn’t using the whole stamp I couldn’t stick my paper in the corner but I used the magnets to make sure the paper wouldn’t move around when I was stamping.

Then it was time to ink up the stamp!  I decided it would be fun to try different ways of inking and wetting the stamp with distress markers to create a matched but not identical set of cards!

Here are the four different techniques I decided to use and the resulting image!

And here’s a close-up of one of the panels…

I experimented with the amount of water (and type) I used to activate the distress markers as well as the way I applied the various colors.  I like the softer look that the two spritzes of water give the image although applying all the colors at once did lead to a little more color bleeding than I intended.  Again, using the M.I.S.T.I. it was easy to apply one color at a time to the stamp, close the lid and stamp the image, open the lid, clean off the stamp, and apply a different color.  I didn’t have to worry about the stamp not lining up correctly or take extra time and care to ensure that it lined up.

And finally, here are the other two cards!  I stamped the sentiment from Hello Flowers with Versafine Onyx Black ink.  I framed the watercolor panels with a piece of Simon Says Stamp Cotton Candy card stock and then mounted them to a top-folding card from Neenah Desert Storm card stock.

I’m curious…what image do you like best?  Any reason why?  Thanks for visiting and hope you’ll leave a comment! 😉