Distress It!

Hello there folks and a Happy Easter to you all. I hope you had a lovely time and didn't eat too much chocolate!
I'm here now with a slightly late post for the new challenge today over at Make My Monday which was chosen by former team mate Jan and involves one of my absolute favourite techniques - Distressing.
I have a tutorial to share too, so that you can see how I turned something that has been in my stash for many years, unused as I tend to prefer stamping but this is all about how you can make a humble Peel Off look like it isn't a peel off! I think I'll be using this technique quite a lot too and you may need a cuppa before you read on although I promise it's not too long.

The finished card is above and you'll find the background paper steps below.

Step 1

For this you need a piece of smooth thick paper or watercolour paper cut to fit your chosen card blank and some peel offs. I chose corner ones but you could use flowers or patterned peel offs to make a frame shape.

As you can see, I placed the peel off in the corners of my paper.

 Step 2

For this step you need some gesso which I brushed roughly all over. You don't have to be precise with this as it gives a better shabby chic effect if the coverage is quite textured.

Step 3

This step takes the most time. You need some Distress inks - I used Tattered Rose, Wild Honey and Frayed Burlap. I applied the 2 lighter shades with a sponge and then added just a touch of the brown which you can see inked the rougher areas more. I then stamped a pattern design (Kaisercraft Lattice) all over with the Wild Honey to add more texture.
I heat embossed the paper with clear detail embossing powder. I distressed the edges and the peel off corners gently with an emery board and added Vintage Photo Distress ink round the edges.
If you click on the photo below, you'll see that sanding some of the paint off the peel offs gives them a rather distressed look like rusted metal.

As you can see on my card above, the addition of some pearls and lace together with the filigree butterfly and the lovely Gibson lady (Flonzcraft), the paper gives a soft vintage feel.

Hoping that you like this and please do let me know what you think.
Hugs,
Fliss xx

PS: I'd also like to enter my tutorial in the current Mixed Media Mayhem at Quirky Crafts Challenges as you can see from the card and tutorial quite a few things came into play. Hope that's OK with you ladies :)