A Few Shabby & Vintage Creations

Two posts in one day! This is only because I've been awake 32 hours (I tried to sleep last night and only got in 2 hours). Gosh darn insomnia! Sure has made me productive last night/today, though!

So in my last post I promised pretty pictures. So those will come first! I might do a separate blog entry for the end of this post I have planned...I guess we'll see!

I have done several projects, some for swaps and some are still in progress, and some (like converting Flat Rate Priority boxes into pretty paper storage) are just for practical purposes.

First thing I'd like to share is my card/mini album fronts. This was a swap hosted by the sweetheart Bonnie on scrapbook.com. I belonged to two categories: Nature and Anything Vintage. First is my design for all three nature cards, and second is a photo of three different card fronts I did for the vintage category.

In the second photo above there are two cards with mini scrolls. I got this idea from Rosanne (roxycar11 on YouTube) and went for the distressed, antiqued look. These are the first four I made and snapped a photo of with Instagram on my phone (who doesn't love that app?!):

These actually took awhile to make. I just started with a piece of rectangular white cardstock in the height I wanted and aged it with Antique Linen Distress Ink. Next I took my Tim Holtz Distresser tool and tore up the edges of the paper, then inked the edges heavily with Vintage Photo Distress Ink. I rolled them up and used a dab of hot glue to keep them in the right shape while I worked on the string. For the scroll on the far right, I accidentally made a pretty big tear, but I like it! I also used a tiny text stamp from Tim Holtz to add some little text on the exposed part of the scroll (stamped in Vintage Photo). Lastly I cut lengths of white crochet thread and dyed it with Vintage Photo Distress Ink (I dabbed the ink pad onto my non-stick craft mat and sprayed water over it. Then I just swirled the string around in it until it was all dyed. I used a heat tool to speed up the drying process which faded the intensity of the Vintage Photo color). These are just too fun. If you like vintage and distressing, you must try this out! I'd love to see other variations on the scroll idea, so if you have any photos or videos showing your own, please comment!

Alright, the codeine in my system is making me pretty sleepy (I've been tired since 4 am, and it's currently 8:40 pm, but not "sleepy"). Once dinner is eaten I'm going to try and sleep so I can rest up for my drive to the north to sell my pink Cricut Expression. Looks like the other idea I had for the end is going to have to wait for another post :) Happy wishes to you all!

~Katie~