Distress, Distress and More Distress

Well, I actually got some creating done this week... with all the commotion going on, that's a good thing.  This particular card is for a friend of mine, who somehow had the weirdest basic Grey paper.. it's from the Dissidant line, and is called Obscure.  I say weird, only because my friend is in her 70s and that type of paper would never hit her shopping cart... where she got it from, I don't know.  Anyways, my friend had no clue of what to do with the paper.  I took one look at it and had something very similar to this card in my head right away.  I tried to explain it to her, but she just gave me the paper.  I promised her I'd have a card for her by next Tuesday (that's when our stamping group meets again). 

What I did with this card is to cut a 1 3/4  x 12 inch strip from the Obscure paper.  I also cut a 1 3/4 x 21 inch strip from a Magenta paper.  I cut  four pieces of the Obscure into 1 3/4 inch squares, and 5 of the Magenta paper into 1 3/4 inch squares.  With the Magenta squares, I crumpled them, then used Fired Brick Distress Ink on the mountains of the paper.  I then ironed them flat.  For the base cardstock, I took a 6 x 12 inch piece of bright orange cardstock...... for those of you who know me, orange is NOT my favourite colour.  I much prefer a pale peachy colour for my oranges. So what does a girl do when the orange is too bright to match the patterned paper? Distress it!!  I went over the whole 6 x 6 front of the card with Old Paper, Dried Marigold, Worn Lipstick, and Fired Brick Distress inks.  The Fried Brick was just around the edges.  I spaced out the squares so that they would be evenly spaced, and placed them somewhat randomly.  After taping the squares down,  I then took a script stamp, inked it in Broken China Distress Ink, and stamped  over the squares.  I then took the last of the 1 3/4 inch strip of Obscure paper, and stamped two Hero Arts butterflies on it ( from Antique Engravings) in black Versafine ink.  I also stamped and cut out the littlest butterfly from the Antiques Engravings set on the scrap of Magenta paper. I then Stickled  the circles and bodies of the butterfly with Star Dust Stickles.  While that was drying, I took the last of the Magenta paper, and stamped the sentiment (Hero Arts) on the Magenta paper.  I tried to just leave it as it was on the card, but it got lost, so I made a slightly larger frame to put the sentiment on. I just used some text weight paper, as I didn't want cardstock to weigh the paper down.  Once the butterflies were dry, I mounted them on the card, using foam tape.  The smallest butterfly is on a brad, which is attaching the gold flower from Imaginiscence to the cardstock. 


I am really pleased with this card.  I am so far ahead on  birthday cards and such that it was nice to take my time and get the card just right.  I don't think my friend is going to recognize her patterned paper on this card!! Although you can see a skull, face and lips from the paper on the card.