All Scratched Up ~ Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge

Hello everyone...

Hope you've had a great weekend! Today, is the start of a brand new challenge over on the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and this week's challenge is called ~ All Scratched Up! From rubbing with tell wool to sandpaper, giving an aged look with a brown ink pad to crumpling and then flattening back out some paper, or even using a scratched up looking stamp ~ this week we challenge you to embrace imperfection and get grungy.

For my piece, I created a tag and added some metal flowers which are...all scratched up!! This is such a fun technique and makes a really bold statement to any project.

To begin with, I needed to make those flowers and for this, I covered Grungepaper with some Metal Foil Tape. I then used Tim's Tattered Florals Die to die cut the petal layers for three separate flowers. Each piece was then die cut using the Blueprint and Gears Texture Fade. I then needed to add colour and for this, I used alcohol inks and applied them with a blender tool to the surface of the flowers. Once the I was happy with the coverage, I then took my sander to each petal and gently sanded back the raised areas. I then shaped each of the distressed metal flowers and layered them to create my dimensional blooms before adding a gem from my stash in the centre of each.

Setting the flowers aside, I then started working on the tag and for this, I added some Distress Stains to my craft sheet before misting them with water and swiping the tag through the inks to pick up the colour. Any remaining stain that is left on the sheet, I always pick up with scrap card and it always comes in useful for future projects.

After heat drying the tag, I distressed the edges, inked them with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and then matted the tag onto a piece of Kraft card for added strength as those flowers are quite weighty! To create the stand for my tag, I die cut chipboard using the Frameworks Honeycomb die, painted it with Distress Paints and then attached it to the bottom edge of my tag.

To create the elements for the tag, once again, I used chipboard, but this time I covered it with some of the paper from the Wallflower Paper stash and then inked up one of Tim's ShadowPress folders with black Archival Ink before running it through the Big Shot to create the word "Wonderful".

I lightly sanded the edges of the word plaque and added this down the side of my tag, together with some of the small die cut hexagons from that pop out from the Frameworks Honeycomb die.

Finally, I used a hot glue gun to attach my flowers in place, adding some cheesecloth, twine and rusty wire to the arrangement.

To complete the tag, I applied Distress Stains to some Crinkle Ribbon and tied a bow in the top of the tag, attaching a Muse Token with a Wire Pin as the final embellishment.

I hope you've enjoyed this week's tutorial and I've inspired you with what I've created this week. As always, if you're looking for some more great ideas and inspiration, then you need to look no further than the blog to see all the wonderful creations from my very talented Design Team members and every week, one lucky random participant has the chance to win a $50 gift voucher from Simon Says Stamp. Good luck....

Thank you so much for all your visits today, I really do appreciate them all and love reading all your comments!!

See you again soon...love Emma xx

Products used:

Tim Holtz Sizzix Tattered Florals Bigz Die

Tim Holtz Sizzix Frameworks Die ~ Honeycomb

Tim Holtz Sizzix Blueprint and Gears Texture Fades

Tim Holtz Sizzix Authentique ShadowPress Debossing Folders

Distress Ink ~ Walnut Stain

Distress Paint ~ Walnut Stain, Antique Linen and Antique Bronze

Distress Stain ~ Ripe Persimmon, Picked Raspberry, Antique Linen for Ribbon

Antique Bronze, Fired Brick, Frayed Burlap and Brushed Corduroy for Tag

Alcohol Ink ~ Sunset Orange, Raspberry Pink and Gold Mixative

Tim Holtz Ranger Alcohol Ink Applicator Refills

Idea-Ology ~ Grungepaper, Muse Token, Wire Pin, Wallflower Paper Stash and Crinkle Ribbon

Ranger Metal Foil Tape Sheets

Archival Ink ~ Black

Cheese Cloth

May Arts Twine

Ranger Size 8 Manila Tags

Ranger Craft Sheet

Big Shot

Ranger Blending Tool