Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it’s a stressful time of year for me with the school year coming to a close.  In fact, this is my last week and I cannot wait!  I’m so ready for the break.  But in the meantime, what better way to relieve some stress than to take it out in your creativity?  It’s a technique challenge this week at the Heart 2 Heart. One of my favorite techniques…distressing.
It’s funny, though.  Distressing is one of my favorite things to do.  In fact, I use some form of distressing on most of my projects.  Yet, whenever I “have” to do something, it takes me a while to get going.  This challenge was no different (plus the event I mentioned yesterday really zapped me emotionally and creatively).  So I went through some card magazines and looked up distressing techniques online, just to get my creative juices flowing.  Here are some of the distressing techniques I considered: sanding, edge distressing, tearing, inking and crumpling.  I decided to go with edge distressing, inking and crumpling (love this…talk about stress relief!) and here’s what I came up with.

I sponged bamboo ink onto the edges of the card base and then edge-distressed the pattern paper and hand-stitched it to the card base.  Once done, I went back and used my fingers to pull up the edges and tear the paper slightly.

I saw an idea in a magazine (Paper Crafts, Jan/Feb 2011, pg. 44) where the center piece kind of looked like a file folder, so I created a version of that.  First, I stamped the background and sponged the edges in bamboo ink.  I then stamped the flowers in first and second generation, bending the stamp to give the flowers a different direction (love that about acrylic stamps!).  Afterwards, I spritzed the paper with water and crumbled the paper a few times.  I used my heat tool to speed up the drying time.  I personally loved how the ink runs.  If I was to redo this card, I would probably spritz it with some bamboo or desert sand ink.

Close-up of the edges.