Sew Shabby

Today’s card is very different from yesterday’s – a much more vintage/shabby-chic look than I usually do. (Though perhaps not vintage/shabby-chic enough to truly fall into those categories.) I have included a multitude of challenges in making this card. The layout comes from retrosketches, though I flipped it around. Tuesday Throwdown asked for distressing, and as I used ink to do so I included Alphabet Challenge Blog‘s I for Ink It Up challenge. 4 Crafty Chicks gave the sewing theme whilst Simon Says Stamp Monday and Craftyhazelnut’s Patterned Paper asked for patterned paper. Pixie’s Snippets Playground requested the use of snippets, and finally A Bit More Time To Craft has an anything goes challenge.

My first step was to have a look for a digi stamp. Normally it takes me a while to decide which to use when I do this, but when I spotted this one from Dearie Dolls I knew I had to use it. I’ve used some of her stamps before and love them. The pin on Pinterest led to a broken link though, and I couldn’t find exactly where it is on the website.

I saved the image from Pinterest and digitally coloured it. Before I started colouring I picked out some patterned papers to give me an idea of what colours I had to play with. My plans did change though as I decided I wanted to add in a wallpaper type pattern behind the little seamstress. I found this heart scrapbooking paper, again through Pinterest, which comes from Mein Lila Park. I immediately knew it was perfect. The different colours in that wallpaper prompted me to change my choice of patterned paper which is good because otherwise the card would have ended up overwhelmingly pink!

Once the digital image was ready I printed it and trimmed it to the size I needed. I then started preparing the patterned paper, trimming each of those to size. I wanted to go with patterns that look like they could be fabrics which I think the biggest panel and the pink chevrons do. The other patterned paper put me in mind of a cutting mat and seemed like a good choice to include! I also cut down some mats for which I used purple, drawing on the little purple hearts.

At this point I was going to start assembling the card when I remembered I need to include distressing! Initially I figured I would do that by just using Distress Ink rubbed around the edges of the purple matting. That didn’t seem like quite enough though. So I looked up how to use my craft knife to distress the edges of the paper too. (I’ve seen it done in some card making videos but couldn’t remember exactly how.) I then distressed the outer edges of the mats, then went on to do it to the main panel and smaller patterned paper panel (considering the chevron and grid together to be one panel). I also edged the image panel with the Seedless Preserves Distress Ink to give a slight border, though I decided against running my knife along it.

Finally it was time to assemble the card. I considered using foam tape to raise either the image panel or the inner panel (the one the image panel is on) but decided that the distressed edges gave enough of an appearance of volume. Instead I just adhered all the layers together using my tape runner.

I’m actually surprised how much I like this card! As I said, it’s not my normal style. I lean more towards clean and simple than vintage, though I do tend to make quite a variety of cards (best way to learn!) and don’t think I could put them all into one category anyway. I’m happy that I met all the requirements for the various challenges (I forgot to mention – all the papers are snippets except for the biggest piece of patterned paper, and the white used for printing the image panel). The colours work well together, as do the patterns. The colouring in the image went well. It may not be to my normal taste but it was good to try new technique, and I’m happy with how it turned out.