Full on Shabby Chic!

Hi Everyone!

After a visit to my parents home, with some time spent sorting attic treasures, I was inspired to use some of the ancestral ephemera I have collected in a project.

The current challenge at Frilly and Funkie is stencil mania, I grabbed a couple of stencils and started creating a background.  Here is a shot of the leftover background, so you can how I started.  For the very first layer, I pounced Distress Embossing Ink through a wood grain stencil and applied Pan Pastels in blue and green.  Next, I applied Distress Inks through a floral stencil, then misted the leftover ink on the stencil with water, flipped it and applied it in a different area of the background, as Linda did in her inspiration piece.  (See it here.)  

I went on to add more Distress Inks, an overall layer of Rock Candy Distress Crackle, and finally another stenciled layer of modeling paste and more Distress Ink, until my background looked like this:

(See it peeking out from behind the Distress Stained seam binding bow?  I didn't take a photo before adding all of my focal layers.  Oops!)

You may be wondering what my finished card looks like by now.  Here it is:

I had so much fun adding layer after layer of vintage goodness!  The envelopes are copies of family letters.  The misspelled "sweetheart" lettering is torn from another copied family letter.  I added lots of Distress Inks to the edges of all of these pieces.  In addition to the vintage handwriting, I applied various pieces of book paper, a stamped and inked green bracket border from my scrap pile and a piece of coordinating pink designer paper. 

 

Rather than adding color to these sweet little paper flowers, I inked them with Perfect medium, and brushed them with white perfect pearls.  The leaves were punched from a project that I started ages ago and abandoned.  It involved braying Perfect Medium onto the raised portion of embossed designer paper, and brushing on Perfect Pearls.  It makes a really gorgeous background, and also some pretty little leaves for this project.

Here is one more shot of the finished card:

I have learned from my art journaling that adding layer after layer until I am pleased can be rewarding, and I let that lesson carry over into this card making session.  I'm really happy with the results.  I hope you have enjoyed seeing it as well.

Elizabeth