Somebody stop me

I know, I know... I'm too busy to be making cards. But I couldn't help it! My new stuff kept calling to me. I got this idea and had to run with it. I stayed up way too late last night because this card just wouldn't let me stop. The upside is I have club next week and we'll use this for our technique card.

I wanted to feature one of our brand-new tools: the distressing kit. This is just an awesome little bundle of goodies: four ink spots and a solid stamp to use them with, plus a sanding block, emory board and three precision files for sanding and distressing just about anything. I was most curious about the inks, so I first took a scrap of naturals ivory card stock, crumpled it up real good, and tested all four inks. The technique is to ink the stamp and then rub it onto the paper. You can see the four colors in the photo. I'll have to play with these more because the inks are blendable and I'm sure there are tons of cool effects you can achieve.

OK, on to my card. I know it looks a little Valentiney (is that a word?) but I'm going with it. The first thing I did was stamp the large image from the new set Notably Ornate with Basic Black ink on Very Vanilla. I let it dry a little - not long enough because when I crumpled the paper it did smear some. But hey, that just adds to the distressed look. I used the charcoal distress ink and then cut the image out.

Next I tackled the chipboard. I don't have any of the new chipboard yet, so I made my own accents with our plain long board and the hearts and brackets die. Now, once upon a time I might have been scared to tackle covering these chipboard brackets, but with the distressing kit it's super easy. I glued on the paper (from the new Love Letter collection), cut out the shapes, and sanded with the emory board. If you need to get into an even smaller space, such as the holes in letters, no worries - the precision files are the answer. So fear the chipboard no more!

All right, let's finish this baby off. I added one more print from the paper pack on the vanilla card base, and on top of that I used a strip of Riding Hood Red card stock trimmed with the Chantilly crochet trim. Love this stuff! I put one of our new black buttons (black buttons! yay!!) on the heart, tied with hemp twine. The die-cut letters (made with Timeless Type dies) added the final touch.

This was really, really fun and I think my club members will love it. They are all experienced enough to handle this, but honestly it's pretty easy. Try it for yourself!