Magazine Rubbings
Distress your magazine images for mixed media or junk journals without the mess of sanding with this easy technique. Choose an image, a base, grab a spray bottle and begin exploring this fun technique to turn your trash into treasures.
materials
What you’ll need:
An embossing/die cutting machine works best but you can use any object for texture, even cling stamps.
Embossing folders
Magazine images
Heavy paper for base, can be book pages glued together, scrapbook paper, folders, index cards, watercolor paper, packaging
Glue
Scissors
Spray bottle with 50/50 mixture water and rubbing alcohol
Soft cloth
Begin by choosing your magazine images, dark images work best but all texture will appear. Whether using a full image or just torn strips or pieces arrange your composition and glue to your base. Allow to dry completely and be sure there is no stickiness on your image before embossing.
Choose an embossing folder and run your image through your machine.
Spray your embossed image lightly with your alcohol water mixture. Take a soft cloth and begin rubbing your emboss. The alcohol will dissolve the ink and you’ll see your emboss begin to appear. If your image dries you can spray it more than once but try not to soak your image or it might lift or tear. Keep rubbing until you are satisfied with the results. All magazines are different so try a few.
See the video tutorial on how to use objects or stamps to achieve similar effects and for more tips on how to disguise any parts of your image you want to hide, for example use torn strips to frame a focal point while blocking unwanted text, image parts or light areas.
Try making just a color mosaic or combining images and colors to achieve different looks. You can ink the top of your lighter areas if you want the emboss to appear more prominent.
Bust your magazine stash and use this technique to have a very creative play and learn new ways to turn your trash to treasures.
Happy paper crafting!
My first explorations of this technique include full images, combined images and torn strips embossed with word/text embossing folders. More to come.
