Distress Stains v. Distress Ink

I have been working on a project and during the process made a slight discovery I want to share with the rest of you. First of all, I want to make it clear I have no relationship with Ranger, Tim Holtz or any other product I promote on my blog. With that out of the way...

The above photo is of using the distress inks the traditional way: smear it on the craft mat, spritz with water until the ink had beaded, and let the paper soak up the pink. Dry with a heat tool, and soak up again.

Above is an example of using the Distress Stains on cardstock. Dried with a heat tool. In some areas I coated a second time or dotted. I spritzed with water while the ink was still wet, but it produced very little water marks. HOWEVER, I let it drip onto my craft mat below:

So I tried again, spritzed while wet, let some of it pour onto the craft mat, dried the cardstock using a heat tool, soak up some of the ink that was on the mat, dry with heat tool. As you can see below, I got some awesome watermarks.

 Below was my final attempts. I rolled some of the Distress Stain on my mat and soaked up with cardstock.

It didn't work out how I wanted, kind of ugly and spotty, lol.  I think I'll stick to either the traditional method, or distress stain/spritz/drip/soak method.

Freda