Thinking of You Card with Distressed Background

I never really thought of the distressed look and the elegant look going together, but when I hatched the idea for this card background I decided to give it a shot. I think it worked pretty well!

You can use the Inspiration Distressing Tool with color core or white core papers to create a patterned background from paper lace or lattice-type files. For this background, I used the Elegant Background from Decorative > Overlays. The background has some detail to it, but I knew that the Distressing Tool would take some of that detail away and make it more like a plain lattice.

My advice before distressing a large background pattern is to make sure your Distressing Tool tip is fresh, and be careful not to get any of the rubbed-away paper bits into the adhesive of your mat. I made a few passes before I achieved the level of distress I wanted. That’s what’s great about the Distressing Tool: you can do as few or as many passes as you want to change the look.

To create the sentiment flourish bracket, I welded the Flourish Hardware from Decorative > Flourish and Damask to a rectangle, leaving space for my sentiment.

The ‘Thinking of You’ sentiment is typed in Academy Engraved and printed on vellum. You might want to do a test print if you’ve never printed on vellum to see how your printer handles it. I used a laser printer here in the office and the heat curled the vellum, but it wasn’t an issue. I ran the vellum piece through a sticker maker to put adhesive on the back then attached it to the flourish piece.

I finished off the card with a little bit of inking (using our Chalking Tool and a pom pom to get in the little holes), a few rhinestones, and some Pop Dots.

There are so many different ways you can use the Distressing Tool to make backgrounds and pattern fills. What ideas do you have? Share with us in the comments or upload photos to the Albums!

Happy Crafting!
~Amanda

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