'NJ's Crafty Tips' - Distressing

Hello lovely crafter's. It's that time of the month again where I show you a crafty tip. This month I am going to show you how to make a 'Distressed' looking card. I absolutely love distressing things! It is one of my favourite techniques. Here is the card I am going to show you how to make this month.........

To make this card you will need the following crafty goodies..

A4 white card/Tilda Fruit Garden Paper pad/a large doily/Tim Holtz Distress Inks Peeled Paint & Antique Linen/Memento Tuxedo Black ink pad/Gorjuss The Owl Clear Stamp set/Promarkers in the following colours....Pastel pink,Honeycomb,Oatmeal,Tan,Henna,Pastel yellow,Yellow,Lime green,Pastel beige,Blender/1 sheet of green Co-ordinations card stock/Sizzix embossing folder/file/seam binding/lace/ribbon/white flowers/hat pins/vintage buttons/craft basics.

If you don't have all of the above goodies then don't worry, just use something you already have in your crafty stash or change the colour scheme to suit your own taste.

Heres how to make the card.....

Take  your sheet of card, mine is 290gsm.

Score down the centre

Fold over to make an A5 card blank

Lay the card landscape on your mat then cover with decorative paper using double-sided tape

Ink the edges using the Peeled paint distress ink. Use a sponge to ink with

Ink onto the paper as well to create a border of ink

Take a large doily, I'm using one from an assorted pack that I bought from a cheap shop. I think I paid about 99p for a pack.

Use a craft knife to carefully cut out the centre of the doily, put to one side you will need this later

Using the same ink & sponge, carefully ink the doily. Dab on the ink

Next scrunch up the doily

Carefully unwrap it

Cut through to break the circle

Attach a length of double-sided tape across the card, about 2.5cm from the bottom edge. Lift off the backing

Starting at the left side attach one end of the doily to the tape. Stick the rest on pleating as you go along

Cut a length of seam binding to fit across the card. Ink with Antique linen distress ink

Scrunch as before

Stick across the card as shown, using double-sided tape to stick the ends inside the card

Attach across the seam binding a length of lace

Stamp the image onto white card and colour in

Cut the image into an oval shape, I've used my X-cut shape cutter system

Ink the edges with the sponge

Cut out a larger oval using the Co-ordinations cardstock

Use an embossing folder and run through your embossing machine

Use a file to sand the embossed oval

Scrunch as before and ink the edges. Don't worry if it tears, this adds to the distressed look

Use pinflair or another silicon glue to attach your image to the green oval

Ink the doily centre that you cut out earlier and scrunch

Attach double-sided tape directly to your card in the centre, lift off the backing

Attach the doily centre

Use Pinflair to attach the green oval and image to the doily centre

Tie a bow using ribbon and lace together and glue to the top left corner. Finally, embellish with hat pins, inked flowers, curly stems, leaves and vintage buttons

At this point you can choose to add a greeting of your choice. I have left one off so I can decide which occasion to use it for later. I do this with my cards sometimes, so I can look through my stock of cards for any upcoming occasion and add the appropriate greeting at that time.

Here we have the finished card you saw at the beginning....

I love this technique. I've got to say along with stamping and colouring, distressing is a favourite of mine!

I hope you have a go at this. It is really enjoyable to do and the results are random too. Each distressed piece of work will differ from the last. Thats the great thing with this technique, the more distressed the better!

So scrunch, tear and sand away as much as you like!LOL

Hope you have fun and a very happy crafting from me....

lots of love

NJ XXX