Having a Smashing Good Time with Staz On Ink!

Teaming up with IMAGINE Crafts/Tsukineko this month meant that each of us on the Altered Pages design team were very kindly given some of the various Tsukineko Inks to play with and I have to say I just love the midi size of the Staz On Inks that I received.

Seeing them got me thinking about one of my favorite techniques using Staz On,  which also caters for my love of random effects.  I am talking about the Acrylic Smash Technique.

Acrylic Smash Technique
In this technique you take acrylic paint  and simply drip and drop paint onto a piece of acetate and then taking another piece of acetate, lay this over the top and squish, smash and smoosh them together similar to how you would if you were making an ink blot painting.  You may like to use your brayer to do this.

Smash Technique Effect

Once you are happy with the effect you separate the sheets and allow them to dry.  You can then cut the acetate to size, die cut or punch shapes etc. to suit your project needs.

Die Cut pieces showing how layers underneath Acetate show through

This is perfect for a whole host of projects from tags, cards, embellishments, overlays for scrapbooking pages etc.  Reaching for your Staz On Ink you then stamp on the reverse side (unpainted side).

A Tag in the making, just need to ink the edges and add a hole and ribbon.

At other times you can stamp first and then cut.

Stamping with Staz On Ink onto the acetate

You can choose to simply use these pieces on their own to embellish a card front.

Stamped Image cut out by hand

Die Cut Oval Frame cut from Acetate Piece

Or combine them with other elements to decorate like I have done here for my ATC



I teamed my Acetate Heart with a Gelli Print Background and Collage Butterfly to make an ATC.

Adding Further Interest to your Acrylic Smash Play

As some areas of the acetate can still be transparent after adding the paint, allowing the underneath layer to show through, you can take things one step further.  You can add further details to your projects background such as stamping and layering patterned paper, music sheets or book pages and text underneath your acetate piece.

My background layer includes stamping and torn paper.

Here I have stamped with Jet Black Staz On using the Basket Weave background stamp and some torn music score and spotted paper.

Here you can see the background showing through the acetate

In the above photo you can see the interest created by the spots, music score and basket weave texture showing through.

You can then stamp onto the front of the acetate your main image and sentiment.

I took my oval die cut frame and decided to stamp over this piece using the Basketweave stamp, and combined this with a bird stamp and sentiment from a Glitz Stamp Set to create a card front.

I do hope my post today will encourage you to grab your Staz On Ink and have a smashing good time of your own.

Happy Creating,

Danie