Very Distressing

There's a popular look for stamped images these days called distressing. Basically, what you do is take your carefully stamped, beautiful images and mess them all up. Sounds like fun, huh? Here is an example:

Copyright Stampin' Up!® 1990-2006

View the card and see the supplies I used here, at my gallery: Distressed Roses.

Two things were done to the focal point of this card. One is commonly called the "direct to paper" technique and the other is good 'ol fashioned sponging.

Direct-to-paper means just what it sounds like--you take your ink pad directly to your paper. To rough up the edges of your cardstock, like I did above, you simply drag it forward across an ink pad. And if you do this quickly, your cardstock will also bend slightly and pick up even more ink. See the streaks of red ink on my image? That's how I created them. You can intentionally place these on your paper as well. Just carefully flick your cardstock off the very edge of your ink pad. This gives you more control over the placement of your streaks.

The second thing that was done to further distress this card was to sponge some more ink into the corners of the image. This was as simple as using a finger-tip sponge dauber. I simply tapped my sponged finger onto my ink pad and then tapped ink onto my cardstock.

Hope you enjoy "ruining" your own works of art. Remember to take it slow and you should have no problems! Enjoy!