Distressing . . .

We hope you'll pop over to Ella today for another Spring Training workout! Today's topic is "distressing" and since Michelle McCord is our resident distressing master, we asked her to share a few of her distressing secrets with you. :)

One of my favorite things to do on a layout is distressing. I have lots of different 'tool's that I use to get the distressed look. One of my favorite things to do is tear paper along a straight edge of a ruler. It gives it a little bit of an uneven edge, and then I can curl the edges up with my fingernails if I want. You can see on my Best of Friends layout, I did just that.

Another one of my favorite 'tools' just happens to be my fingernails! I love to turn up the edges of embellishments, paper, whatever can be 'bent', really. On my 'Goofy' layout, I used my fingernails to turn up the edges of the penant banner so that it looks as if they are blowing in the wind. I also used my fingernails on the hearts on the page, and put a crease in the middle of them before adhering them to the page. It also gives the hearts a 3-d look.

Yet another favorite tool of mine is not a scrapbooking tool at all....a serrated steak knife! with practice using the knife, you can get some GREAT looking distressed edges and rips in your paper that look like they really are supposed to be there. On my Goofy Girl layout, I used the steak knife around the edges to soften them up a bit.