New Series, Materials and my thoughts

Hi everyone a very warm welcome to you all. Im sorry I haven't been around much lately, what with study, work and life in general I just haven't had time. I hope you are all well and finding time to create.

This post is part 1 of a monthly review of products that live in my craft room. I am no expert, but I will share my experiences and where possible compare them with similar products.

So to kick us off I'm using Distress Crayons designed by Tim Holtz for Ranger and Gelatos, by Fabre Castelle. Many people ask themselves is there a difference, or which of them should they buy. So hopefully this will give you some information to help make that decision easy.

 

In this part1, I wanted to compare how they performed on paper dry, so one half of the page was coated with Gesso and the other left as it is. I then scribbled on the paper with 3 similar colours from each brand.

 

The lefthand side had the Gesso and the right hand nothing. I applied the Crayons on both sides, and as you can see both sets were easily blended, although I think they both went on better over the Gesso. They both were smooth and blended easily, whereas on the non Gesso side although they still blended it was harder to get wax to move.

My next test was to stamp on all four parts of my page using Black Archival Ink and a flower from EEG14 from Paper Artsy.

All four stamped well, with little to distinguish between them, however colouring in the flowers it became clear that The Distress inks worked better on the non Gessoed side than the Gelatos. You can see how the wax has filled in the stamped area well on three of the four flowers, the forth, bottom right isn't so covered.

 

My conclusion is that using them dry they both performed in a similar way;whereas the Distress Crayons worked better on the non Gessoed side. So if you are someone who doesn't like to prime your page first, then for blending go for the Distress Crayons. If you do prime both work equally well.

 

Part2 will look at how they both perform when activated with liquid, and how other mediums work on top of them. So watch this space.

 

I hope this was useful, if you have requests of what you would like me to review then please leave in the comment or email me and I will do my best.

Take care now and stay Creative

Hugs xxxx