Distressing Essentials (DE)

No, I'm not talking about what you need to be distressed!  There's no distress while we're crafting thank you - or at least there shouldn't be!  However, if you have the kit from SU called Distressing Essentials, you will have all you need to create beautiful aged projects that lend themselves to all sorts of occasions.

With the masculine card presenting a constant challenge for me (sorry boys, I mean that in a nice way), this weeks class was an opportunity to see how to get a grown up male look without a lot of fuss but also without it being "boring" and plain.  Cue the DE kit.  There's the fantastic colour spots - 4 of them in mahogany, tea, charcoal & blue; a flat rubber stamp for blending and smudging colour; a large sanding block & an emery board with different grades of roughness from fine to gritty to give texture and soften stamped images or paper patterns; and 3 shaped metal files for sanding in tight spots like chipboard letters and around the inside edges of punched holes.    

So after a demo of the possibilities I threw the challenge to the ladies to create a distressed card for a special male.   Heres what they did:

Avril's card

Avril used the rubber stamp to smoosh ink onto the envelope.

Joey stamped onto the DSP.  The vintage trinkets are perfect on the crimped piece.

Laurel made the most of the pattern on the DSP and it goes really well with the sponging on around the stamped image.

Sadie's inked, torn and sponged to get this gorgeous effect.   The raspberries just speak for themselves.

Susie has layer upon layer to add texture.  She has stamped onto twill tape and used the ink spots to "dirty" up the clean twill so it fits nicely with the other elements. The chipboard letter has been covered in paper, stamped & filed - genius!

Tracy's card has nice texture created by the tearing of the layers, scrunching the paper and using the files to rough up the edges.

Isn't it lovely to see how you can all take the same materials and turn out a bunch of different stuff?  Everyone used the same tools, same DSP (Botanical Gazette) and same stamps.  We did have a lot of greeting stamps available though because I think it's really important that my customers can make a card that suits their needs.  The use of twill tape in place of ribbon & jumbo eyelets with Hemp instead of linen thread also give the end result a more masculine feel.   

Hope you are inspired to go make something!
Cheers
Karen