Getting Grungy

This one is another card that I made for the Elusive Images Design Team Application - remember I said in my previous post that the Lighthouse Scene is a lovely image - well it is an I couldn't resist making a very different card with it.  As Glenda has posted a photo of  this one over on the Elusive Images Design Team Blog I thought I would share how I made the card.

The image was stamped with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and I used a wet paintbrush to drag colour from the stamped outline to create extra shading in the image.  Where I needed more shading I dabbed the ink pad onto my craft sheet and used my wet paint brush to pick up a litte more colour.  If you look carefully there is also a tiny touch of Aged Mahogany in the image.  The ink was very watered down on my craft sheet then picked up on my paint brush and used to make the sails on the boats stand out just a little more.  Once the image was dry I used  the blade of my scissors to distress the edges a bit then used Cut 'n' Dry foam to blend more ink from the Vintage Photos pad around the edge to create a vignette effect.  Finally I dragged and smudged my Versamark pad around the edge, sprinkled on Gold EP and heated.

The finished image was mounted onto black card which I embellished with some kitchen twine that had been grunged up to look like old dirty ropes from a sailing ship. I did this by  using just about every shade of  brown distress ink I own, from Frayed Burlap to Brushed Corduroy!  It was easy enough to do, just splodge the brown inks onto a craft sheet, spritz liberally with water then roll and scrunch the peice of twine around in the inky puddle so it soaks in the inky water.  Let it dry then repeat as needed to darken.  Once the twine was nearly dry  I made the browny shades more uneven by smudging a little ink directly from the ink pads onto the twine and lightly spritzing so as to make the inky smudge bleed into the twine more - it bleeds better if the twine is still a little damp when you do this.   The knots were tied using an authentic sailors knot - in this case a figure of eight knot.  I wanted the knots to be the Real MaCoy, so I did some research online and found this web site with some great instructions on how to try proper sailors knots.  Just click on any of those knots and an animated page opens that shows how to tie the knot.

Finally my background layer - once again I turned to my Distress Inks in assorted shades of brown and used the wrinkle free technique to create the background.   Once this was dry I overstamped with Versamark using an anchor image from the Seashell Collage themeplate and dusted this with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls then very lightly spritzed with water to set the Perfect Pearls.  The edges were treated in the same way as the edges of the main image - distressed with the blade of my scissors, a little ink blended with Cut 'n' Dry foam, and smudgy gold embossing.  The whole thing is mounted onto black card from the same stock I used to mat under the main image.

If you got this far, sorry it's such a long post, but I wanted to share how I made this card because I had a lot of fun making it!