Card Factory–Card from Recycled Wedding Service Sheet

In my stash I’ve got various old service sheets from weddings etc., some of which were printed on nice card or paper that was too good to throw away. I have a few of this particular one, A4 folded to A5 size, and some sheets that are blank on the back, so I glued an A5 sheet inside to cover the printing – this would also serve to strengthen it, as the card isn’t that thick for supporting embellishments etc. The card is cream-coloured, with a slight texture, and is slightly mottled.

Also in my stash I still have some absolutely ghastly duplex (double-sided) card that I posted about ages ago – the card itself is super quality, really thick and stiff, but the colours! Oh my goodness. Get your sunglasses out, folks. I’ve decided to use the orange side of this piece, rather than the bright cerise pink (whoever thought of putting those two garish colours together??!) and tone it down with lots of distressing, stencilling, glimmer misting, etc. etc. – it will be very experimental, adding layers until I’m happy with it.

I began by distressing the edges of the service sheet, front and back, inside and out, with Tea Dye Distress Ink. This showed up a few little creases in the card, but I don’t mind that – it adds to the vintage, distressed effect.

I couldn’t wait to get my teeth into the ghastly orange card (well, I suppose that would be one way to distress it!) – first step, distress with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, dabbing all over with an Inkylicious Ink Duster to give a nice mottled effect.

I repeated the process with Dusty Concord Distress Ink – since orange and purple are complimentary colours, when mixed, they form a shade of brown. To darken it further, I added some Black Soot Distress Ink. In each case, I used a dabbing, stibbling motion with the ink duster.

It’s starting to look a bit like leather now. Time for a bit of stencilling, I think.

I painted on a thin layer of the beige acrylic glaze left over from my Remembrance page in my art journal, laid a stencil over the top and spritzed it with water, and then blotted and wiped it off through the stencil.

After this, I painted some glaze on the un-stencilled parts, placed the stencil on top, spritzed with water, and wiped off, leaving the paint under the stencil. I blotted the whole lot off with damp kitchen paper and this is the result.

Now time for some Glimmer Mist and Perfect Pearls. I sprayed it lightly in patches with my DIY Glimmer Mist made from Wild Honey Distress Re-Inker and Perfect Pearl coloured Perfect Pearls which gave it a silvery metallic sheen – the Wild Honey didn’t show up much because it was already rather dark. I need to mix up some new DIY Glimmer Mist with a more bronzy Perfect Pearls, I think.

I dabbed at it randomly with my small Perfect Medium pad (clear embossing ink) and then brushed it lightly with dry Cappuccino Perfect Pearls and spritzed it with water, and rubbed it gently to soften any sharp edges. It now has a more generalised random pearlescent sheen which I think I am happy with.

I think this is definitely a background I’d like to use in my art journal – nice and grungey and dark, with subtle shades and shimmers. I think it needs some stamping or embellishment in dull gold or rust.

All the stamps I used are from Designs by Ryn. First of all I stamped it twice with her “Water Droplets” stamp from her Textures range (CM-T3), using black archival ink. Then I used two of her gorgeous moth stamps from her Butterflies and Moths range – the top one is “Luna” (CM-B2) and the bottom two are “Tsuki” (CM-B5), stamping with Versamark and heat embossing with copper embossing powder.

The piece was matted onto the distressed card base, and I picked out the tiny catch-lights on each water droplet with my white Uni-ball marker pen. To finish the piece, I painted the moths with Perfect Pearls from my palette: the top moth is done with Berry Twist, a simply gorgeous dichroic one which turns from purple to blue according to the light. The middle moth was painted with Mint, and the bottom one with Turquoise. All the moth bodies were painted with Plum, another dichroic one which alternates between purple and a slightly more turquoise-blue than Berry Twist. This is the finished card. Unbelievable that it started with that horrendous garish orange card! I’m so glad I didn’t throw it away.

 

Finally, a detail shot of the stamping and embossing.