Thursday, February 10, 2011

Aging some cardboard cutouts




I have a lot of cardboard cutouts, and the colors are too vibrant and basic for most of the pages I create and most of my papers. Except for red, white and blue layouts which I don't use often, my colors are usually warmer with less saturation. Therefore, what do I do with about 200 pages of cardboard punchouts, both letters and shapes?
The first thing I tried was was stamping them. The problem with simply stamping over them, was the cardboard has a shiny surface, and even the staze on ink was not sticking well. So after I stamped each of them with a musical notes background stamp, I decided to emboss them. This sealed the ink over the shiny cardboard, desaturated the colors and made it possible to age the cardboard with distress inks if needed.
With the small round letter cardboard cutouts, I sanded the edges, to remove the nubs, and sanded some of the shiney cardboard and print off the top. Then I distressed with walnut ink to age.
This improved these elements greatly, and I can now use them for layouts and mini's. No more bright, saturated shiny cardboard.

2 comments:

  1. They were way to bright and "cartoony." That was actually a really good idea. I can probably even find a way to use them now!

    Feel better soon, you need to make more stuff/posts!

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