Rainy Day in New England

This card is the finished product after an entire morning of playing with paper. I was inspired by the need to come up with more ideas for an upcoming class that I'm going to teach (September 26) called, "Reduce without a Diet". It's a reference to reducing your waste (vs your waist) by re-using items that might otherwise end up in the trash. This card won't be part of the class because of the time involved, but the technique is definitely going to be used. The recycled items on this card are the re-used dryer sheet (washed, ironed & spritzed with Lime Twist Glimmer Mist), 3 random pieces of bling in the upper right corner, extra beads that were in my box & a small piece of wire (through the beads). I really wanted to use my new Tim Holtz stamp & there are several Distress Inks on the papers. I started with a simple cream cardstock & it's the same piece for all 3 pieces of the card (background, letter stamped torn piece & focal image). The variances are due to the inks used to distress the pages. I primarily used: Vintage Photo, a little bit of Shabby Shutters & some Faded Jeans. The image in the forefront was mounted onto a scrap of black cardstock. The number 13 was stamped twice. I cut out the rectangle (along with 2 more to add depth) & lightly blended some of the Faded Jeans over the top to just take a little of the starkness out. I glued three layers & put some Glossy Accent over the top to make it shine. I wanted to bring out the subtle blue in the Faded Jeans ink, so mounted on a perfect piece of dark blue cardstock that I had just the right amount of.

I love rainy days in New England & today is drizzly & grey outside. It's ideal for time spent playing with paper. I'm going to get to work on my next project. It involves some old sheet music & might incorporate some of the ideas I used for this card. If I like the outcome I'll post a photo.