Handmade designs distressed card

 Well winter is well and truly here for me. The sky's are dull and the view from my crafting table, otherwise known as the dining table 😉, is dreary and drab. We has a little snow yesterday but not enough to make it a winer wonder land rather just enough to show up the dirt 😜. Anyway what's the weather got to do with today's inspiration I hear you ask..  well as I sit and face the forest the outlook is brown on brown and I need some colour! So decided it was time to make a card using a more hopeful colour palette. 

As I had the joining offer exclusive stamp set on the table and my trusty Stampin' Write markers to hand this is what I came up with.

The style of the card is what is generally called Distressed.  Now it's a big leap for me as I'm usually drawn to a cleaner look. But I had this idea and decided to run with it!

For the background stamped texture I used a new stamp set called Elements of Text. I used the mossy meadow pen from the neutrals marker pens and the soft sea foam from the subtles marker pens. These 2 shades of green work well together I hope you agree. I used the pens to add ink to the stamps rather than an ink pad. The Stampin' Write markers are a great way to add colour to your stash and there are lots of fun techniques you can do with them.

I used the dark green pen, mossy meadow, to just ink the leaves on the plant and pot stamp from the Handmade Designs set. Using the marker pen means that I didn't need to mask of the pot on the stamp each time I inked it up.

Once I'd finished stamping I took the light green, soft sea foam, marker pen and coloured in the leaves of plants. Now the distressing part. To add texture to the edge of the panel I ran the blade of an old pair of scissors along the edges. As the cardstock is a good weight you can be quite rough with it after all I was looking for a distressed feel 😉.

Once the white panel was finished I added it to a dark green cardstock panel just adhering it to the center.  This leaves the edges to curl and come away a little . The sentiment was stamped with the dark green on a strip of the light green cardstock used for the card base. I then tore the edges both above and below the sentiment. Then I took the torn of edges and adhered them behind the sentiment strip to enhance to torn edge look. 

A swirl of green twine from the Natural tones linen thread trio and a scattering of brushed brass butterflies, now that's a mouthful 😜, and the card was made.

What do you think? Has it hit the distressed feel? I have to say it certainly brought some greenery to my table as I made it.