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We've kept you all in the suspense and I'm sure wondering just when we were going to publish these! And, guess what? I am going to keep you waiting for just a few more minutes because I have two layouts of my own I want to share with you first.

Have you ever had those perfect pictures, perfect papers, and perfect embellishments but when you put it all together it was totally missing something and your layout just felt incomplete? In my case, I have! What was was lacking from my layout was some good old distressing.
Here's the first take...now this was one of the very first layouts I've ever completed when I began scrapbooking in 2007. This was before I ever heard of distressing. I had these great vintage photos that I spent hours (literally) digitally restoring and removing discoloring; found the perfect paper I wanted to use, and had this great title from a vellum quote stack and suited my pictures well.

You can see this great paper and great pictures, but are left feeling like the picture were just put on a piece of paper with very little effort. Now, here's the altered layout I did about 7 months ago...

I used the same photos (minus one from the original), title, paper(I just cut it up and distressed with an edge distresser and ink), and added some extra flare with some embossing and beads, and lace flowers and my layout that had no vintage flare finally has plenty of character and helps tell the story without writing a word by adding just some distressing!

Onto the showcase of distressed layouts! There were so many amazing layouts with great distressing. I was in awe and so inspired after looking through all of them but these are highlights:

A little or a lot of stress can be can good, that's for you to decide when trying to achieve that distressed look on your projects or photographs. I distress nearly everything every project I create; photographs included. Give me my favorite scissors, emery board, and some ink and I'm as happy as a child who just scored "the mother load" of candy while out trick-or-treating. Some you may be sitting there thinking, "no way am I going to do anything to my photographs--what if I ruin them?" Have no fear, I have some tips and little "picture by picture" tutorial for you to help you break out of that shell and get that shabby chic look you so love, but are afraid to try.

Distressing With Scissors
Whether you are a card maker or just strictly a scrapbooker we all have a pair (or two) of these lying around. You got it, scissors! Big or small, decorative or good old cutting shears; it doesn't matter which you have because any pair of them will work to add a little shabbiness to your project. In this project here I created. I used a pair of decorative scissors (Victorian style) to cut off the upper left corner of my photograph, lightly inked the edge I cut off, and there you have it-- just a little bit of distressing, but it adds a little flare to the photograph.

Last week we defined distressing as altering your paper or embellishments to create a well-worn or aged look. We also shared with you some distressing techniques (paper tearing, crumpling, and sanding)as ways to achieve that look. This week we'd love to share with you some of the highlights from all of the amazing card submissions we had of your distressed creations.

This first card here, I just had to feature from Aymee Gandy, aka "southernbellescrapper". Aymee's card hit on every technique of article on distressing. Here you can see Aymee uses the tearing technique to create her stripes of her American flag, her embellies have been lightly crumpled and distressed with an edge distresser, and her embossing has been lightly sanded to reveal the inner core of her color core paper.




Aymee Gandy
(see below for a new call for submissions)

Kim Sparks