Distressed Backgrounds

Here are a few of my October photos for Project 365.  For this month, I'm organizing them according to subject rather than by week. 

This post was supposed to be yesterday's tip on backgrounds but since I'm late anyway, I'll digress into leaves.  The leaves above were created using some of Jennifer McGuire's inking techniques.  I inked my acrylic blocks in distress inks.  Rather than spray with water, I used Angel's  Glimmer Mist.  Then I pressed the block onto photo paper.  I chose photo paper because it would be easy to spread the ink around and also it is thin.  I knew punching the leaves would be too difficult out of watercolor paper.   The effects were gorgeous although the colors came out much lighter than I expected.  For most of the leaves, I used a little distress ink on the edges. 

Now for the background...

Over the weekend I was looking for a background designer paper for this fall page.  I wanted something fairly simple, neutral color but with a little interest.  The best fits in my stash were pages allocated for other projects or too 'pink, blue' or well, something.   It's like when you look in your closet full of clothes and lament:  "I don't have a think to wear."  Sometimes you just don't have the right paper.

I did have this little dot paper from Stampin' Up!  To add some of the features found on many designer papers, I turned to my inks and a few stamps.  Here is my process:

1. Stamp with a background stamp in a neutral color without much contrast to the small print in the designer paper.  My paper had So Saffron dots so I used River Rock to stamp with the Sanded background stamp.
2. Distress the edges starting with a darker shade on the outside and a lighter shade just inside the dark edge.  (I got that tip from Jennifer McGuire at Two Peas).   I used Vintage Photo on the outside edge and then some Antique Linen just inside that edge.

 

3.  To finish off the page, add some lightly stamped text images.  I used Antique Linen to randomly stamp these definitions from the Define Your Life set.  For a fancier page, you can stamp lightly with flourishes or brocade type images.

Makking your own distressed background paper really stretches your stash and gives you the colors you want for your pages.  It also let me put those words in places they could be seen in the layout.

Thanks for visiting!

Ingredients:  Stamps:  Sanded, Define Your Life by Stampin' Up!
Ink:  River Rock, Dusty Durango, Crushed Curry from SU!; Vintage Photo and Antique Linen from Ranger
DSP:  Sweet Pea from SU!
Chipboard:  Basic Grey Undressed
Font:  Enchanted Prairie Dog from Dafont.com