Thursday 13 March 2014

The Tim Holtz Distress Spritzer - my review

Good evening folks.
I trust that this finds you well. Today has been a glorious day here in my corner of England. The door to the crafty man cave has been open all day and I have been sitting outside for a lot of it crafting in the sunshine!
Hopefully we'll have many more days like that......
Anyway, back to the title; as it says, this is my review of Tim's new Distress Marker Spritzer. Firstly I would like to stress this is entirely unsolicited; I was not asked to do this and I spent my own pennies to buy the tool. ...... and last night and today I had a bit of time to test it out properly so I thought I'd share the results.

I'm not going to go through the whole how it works, Tim's video demoing it at the launch is HERE if you haven't seen it yet.

So, this is what I did with it....  I used Tim'd doily Layering Stencil for my test runs.
Starting with Distress Markers (Stormy Sky and Fired Brick) I set out to do the basic effect. I will say that it can take a bit of time to get used to the tool but once you have found a comfortable grip for you then it gets so much easier. The other thing I would say straight away too is once you have squeezed and let go, let it go back fully before squeezing again. It gives you a MUCH better coverage and is definitely then easier on the hand. (voice of experience talking here friends)

 So, just by spritzing with with the tool I was able to achieve this lovely speckled finish as well as a very crisp image from the stencil. Then once I took the stencil away I spritzed it (the stencil) with water and flipped it onto another tag, I wasn't sure if it would have enough ink to transfer effectively
 but as you can see, the tag on the right is the watered image and is a pretty decent transfer so I was pleased with that.

My next stop was Dylusions inks. I have decanted these inks into fillable brushes and I was curious to see how they would perform. To fit them you need to remove the inner cover of the spritzer and then place them over the nozzle. The brush fanned out a bit but it does work. I used London Blue, Dirty Martini and Crushed Grape and this is the result.
 Bet you've never seen Dylusions this subtle have you? I was pretty impressed as there was no bleeding under which I thought may happen because there is a lot more liquid in the brushes compared to the Markers.  Just to show you the difference....
 The tag on the right has been spritzed directly from the Dylusions spray bottles, see how much more intense the colours are. I still want to experiment a bit more with the inks to see how intense I can get the colour without bleeding though, especially with more delicate stencils.
Then we come onto the thing that I really like; no markers.....
 Using the Spritzer as an "air sprayer" Great fun. I spritzed the Dylusions ink quite close to the tag to form a puddle and then began to blast the air to move it around. Do one colour at a time to prevent muddying the colours. It works a treat, no more huffing and puffing or buying cans of compressed air!

Next up was Distress Stains.
 I covered a tag with two colours and used the Spritzer to try to blend the colours; not very successful bit it kinda worked..... So I then decided to carry on combining techniques on this tag
 So I added a blob of stain and used the air to move it around, that looked pretty good to me
 Next, I took the stencil and using a Marker I added detail to the bottom area. What I like is the control you have over where you spray (unlike with for example Dylusions) you can add detail almost "underneath" a layer if you know what I mean.
Then, I didn't like the larger blob of flat colour where I had put the initial stain down before moving it with the air so I took the mask and using the Black Soot Marker in the spritzer I was able to add this centre which I think looks great. I must say that I like the way this tag has turned out. It looks so complicated but is really simple to achieve.

Well, there you have it; my experiments with the Spritzer. Do I like it ? Heck yes! Will I use it again? Definitely! Do you need one? That's for you to decide........

Things to consider; though it is easy to use, I could definitely feel it in my hands after a while so for those who may have dexterity concerns, it may be worthwhile finding someone who has one to try first. What is good though is the fact that speed is not an issue so you can work at you own comfortable pace and still get great results.
In my opinion, it is a quality product and I cannot see any reason why you would not get many years use out of it. I for one am very pleased with it!

11 comments:

jan said...

Hi Neil, Thank you for your appraisal of the spritzer, I like the tags and how each experiment bought such different results. A really useful reference and a good guide as to whether one needs this or not, I think that I do need this for sure lol, you have convinced me that it would be well worth it for the fun factor and for the effects that can be achieved.

Jan x

Steven said...

Thanks for sharing!!

whyducks said...

A great, helpful and pretty post Neil

...the yorkshire fox... said...

...great posting Neil, love all the layering effects you have created, this gadget comes up trumps from your step by step guide and the results are pretty stunning :)xx

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the review Neil, the tags look great.

JoZart Designs said...

good balanced info and quite inspiring. Thanks Neil. I use cans of compressed air quite often, especially with Alcohol Inks so it would be good to try it with those.
No sun here ... it's freezing fog and so bad the ferries across the Mersey have been cancelled for 3 days.
Jo x

perfectly4med said...

Great review and great results. And mine arrived last night so great timing too!

Neil

Artyjen said...

Thanks for the review Neil...can't imagine anywhere near me where I could go to see this in action! Have been wondering about how much effort needed to use it! Personally I could'nt knock the skin off a rice pudding as they say!!! ROFL
xoxo Sioux

Sande said...

Your weather sounds lovely. We are still in freezing temperatures, snow and high winds here on the east coast of the US. Can't wait for spring so I can get crafty outside.

Fantastic review and I super that you played/demo'd it with different mediums as opposed to just markers. I've been debated whether to get one or not but after your tutorial I think I'll order one today.

www.creativepointe.blogspot.com said...

Great review as I have been desiring one of these! Thanks for all the ideas (other than markers) to use it with!!

Bea said...

Thank you!