I'm Distressed! Part 4

In this final installment on distressing, I will be showing you edge distressing. You can do this technique with a pair of scissors, or a special "edge distresser" tool. An edge distressing tool is usually round and looks like a flower - only with little razor blades between the petals. In order to edge distress, you scrape the edge of your tool or scissors along the edge of your paper. Let's see how it works.

This is a picture of a very nice card without edge distressing:

Now, this is perfectly beautiful the way it is, however if you are a fan of shabby chic or grunge, then you might want to "rough it up" a little. As I mentioned, the technique involves running the edge of your scissors or edge distresser along the edge of your paper:

What it basically does is shred the edges of your paper - tearing them up a bit. It can be a bit messy with little bits of paper falling everywhere. Keep scraping along each edge of your paper:

 Continue this process for each piece on the card:

Now that you've really roughed-up the edges of all the papers, assemble your card. Now it looks like this:

It definitely adds some texture to the project! For a variation, you can ink the edges after you've distressed them, but I personally like the white edge (of course this only works with cardstock/paper with a white core).

I hope you have enjoyed being Distressed! Next time, I will be sharing my Holiday Open House artwork with you! You'll get to see lots of gorgeous examples of what you can do with the brand new products in Close To My Heart's new Autumn/Winter Idea Book! So stay tuned!

Until then, Happy Stamping!