My First Distressed Card

After the wonderful tutorial on Distressing I had at the Big Stamp and Scrapbooking Show with Niki from 'Pages of Memories'. I thought I'd be brave and give it a go. I've had the sweetest pictures of my nephew floating around in my photo box for years. Which I didn't know quite how to display or use, as they are actually tiny film strip size photos. But I came across them the other night and having just seen Niki's distressing demonstration, I had an idea for a birthday card for him. It's not perfect and I would do things a little differently next time. But as a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with the overall effect.

My nephew is a big strapping teenager now, so I thought he might get a kick out of a card that has a 'mini him' on it. We'll have to wait and see! It's destined for New Zealand in the next couple of days, so fingers crossed it's well received.

Not much to write up about my process creating the card. It is a plain white card base, which I distressed with Ranger Distress Ink in Walnut. I then stamped the corners and overall design using the lovely Lili of the Valley 'Grunge Corners' set. I love the colour of the Walnut stain, and was initially a little worried, that the black and white images wouldn't sit right with the brown stain, but a washed a little of the colour over the photos to soften the stark black and white images and I think it worked rather well to give them an almost Sepia tone. I do like the effect of distressing and aging on cards, so I will definitely have another go at this! :)