Making Mistakes is Fun!

Hi everyone and welcome! Yesterday I shared the first of several cards made with the new Tim Holtz Dapper Paper Stash HERE. It's always encouraging to get lovely comments and one caught my eye in particular; Paula Cheney - "fantastic! I only wish there was steps out to see exactly how you created that background! Can't wait to see what else you so with the Dapper paper stash". Now this is not a lady you say no to and bearing in mind how many fabulous tutorials she shares regularly on her own blog One Lucky Day it's only fair to reciprocate.

So here goes, warts and all!... Start by spreading translucent embossing paste onto your piece of Dapper paper. As Tim's stencils are designed to work with tags this will take two passes to complete and I let the first side dry before applying paste to the second side.

Once the paste is dry blend Distress Ink all over your paper to reveal the stripes.

Choose your focal image (in this case a young lady from the Found Relatives collection - I cut around her to remove the background) and begin building the Ephemera elements around her inking the edges as you go.

I add thick card behind the initial 'bundle' so further layers can be added underneath more easily when you glue it onto the background.

Start building the design on your embossed background; I like to use scrapbook layout designs and principles to do this, even on 6x6 cards, as they are well balanced and freely available on the Internet.

Flash Cards are fabulous for adding a bold word or two to any design but they have a shiny surface so altering their colour with Distress Inks is not so effective. Fear not! Distress Crayons were made for tough jobs like these! Translucent and creamy, they are perfect for blending over the cards (I went for an uneven 'grungy' look here but you can go softer and more colourful if you want!) And if you go wrong they are water reactive so just take a baby wipe to them and start again!

They are also useful for adding shading around focal images to help them stand out on layered or patterned backgrounds. I use my Detailer Nib Water Brush with the Black Soot version a lot to paint a small line, and since they're water reactive if you go wrong you can blend them out!

At this stage I stood back, looked at the overall design, and had a change of heart about the lines/blue in the background. Panic not! We can't all be perfect and there's always a solution from which new lessons can be learned! I cut away the background carefully (it's also reusable!) and grabbed another piece of the same card (thanks for including two of each in this stash Tim!!!) Spreading more translucent paste, this time going back to the trusty Tiles stencil, I then reached for the new Picket Fence Distress Ink pad. Awesome! It's translucent so you may want to blend a few layers on to get a lighter look and I used a baby wipe over the paste tiles to remove traces of pigment ink from them.

So, with a little Archival ink blended around the borders and some essential Idea-Ology finishing touches (Dapper Fasteners, a Word Band and some Linen Ribbon) here's the new finished card...

And here's a couple of close ups...

I'm SO much happier with that background! and thrilled to have tested out the Picket Fence Distress Ink too.

That's it for today but I'll be back with more Dapper cards soon and something completely different tomorrow so I hope you can join me for that.

In the meantime enjoy what's left of the weekend and have a great new week, whatever you're up to. Take care of yourselves, Jenny xxx