How Distressing!

Okay, I admit that was a rather dramatic title for this post. However, I wanted to show a card that features Distress Ink. The first picture is actually the end product. It shows what the picture looked like after I changed it to a black and white photo, cropped it, colored it with Distress Inks, and scratched it with sand paper. This is what the original photo looked like:


The picture of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was taken by my mom during one of her numerous trips to North Carolina's Outer Banks. To say that she is a lighthouse junkie is a major understatement.

I would like to retract my earlier statement about how I changed the photo from color to black and white. In reality, I called my brother. The conversation went more like this, "Hey. Do you know that picture mom has hanging in her bathroom? Could you go and take it out of the frame, scan it, and email me a both a color and black and white copy? Great." I am so pathetic. I really don't know why he answers the phone when I call.

I then resized the photo with my paper trimmer and placed it onto a scrap piece of paper located on top of an old mouse pad. I wanted to brayer the card, and I think you get better results if you work on a soft surface (mouse pad) rather than a hard table. I spritzed the photo lightly so that the ink would spread well and brayered over the photo with Vintage Photo Distress ink. I rolled the brayer back and forth until I got the color I wanted. I let the piece dry and then scratched it with some heavy duty sandpaper to make the photo look old and worn.

For the other pieces of the card, I used more Distress Ink so that all the elements would match each other. The tan cardstock had ridges in it, so I picked up some ink with my finger and lightly brushed the same ink over the ridges to make them darker. That's right. I have 10,000 stamping tools, and I used my finger. Sigh.

I chose some scrapbook paper with shells on it, crumpled it, and ran an Antique Linen Distress Ink pad over the ridges to color them. I then spritzed the paper with water so that the ink would bleed and distress the paper. Once the paper was dry, I assembled all the pieces of the card. If the shell I chose hadn't had brown in it, I would have used Distress Ink on it as well.

I have to say thanks to my family for doing most of the work for this card!