Several years ago, the fabulously talented and equally witty Janine Tinklenburg, aka JanTink, created a denim card that I loved. As I stared at my stamps with Father's Day in mind, I remembered her card and thought that a tutorial might be in order. (Don't worry--I checked with JanTink first and have her blessing!) Now I realize that it's a bit late for making one this year if you don't have the Denim backgrounder, but guys have birthdays too! Please Note: The store seems to have sold out of the Denim Backgrounder today, making the link appear to be non-existent; I have no projected date for restock since I am not on the supply end of things.
I started by stamping my Denim Backgrounder on some Memory Box Ocean cardstock in Adirondack Denim ink. It is important to use a brayer when you are inking a finely-textured background. You will get much better ink coverage (and consequently more believeable texture) if you apply ink evenly.
After inking the denim background, I applied some Tea Dye Distress ink around the edges to age my jeans a bit. (Jan did a great job of having wrinkled jeans in places; consider mine dress jeans, and feel free to grunge them more as you wish. ;-D)
After distressing the edges slightly, I used aTim Holtz ruler and piercing tool to pierce a double row of holes, 1/4" apart down one side.
After piercing the double row, I used the ruler and white Prismacolor pencil to draw a hard edge on the right side of the double-pierced rows and free-handed a soft edge on the left side of the pierced rows. Important: avoid getting white pencil on the pierced lines. If you get a waxy coating on them, you will not get the white gel pen in the next step to write on the paper.
The right side of the lines will became my seam, and the left side is unseamed, though "sewn." I used a white gel pen to draw the stitches. Next I used a Copic B34 to deepen the blue on the right side, the hard edge. I used a Copic W1 to soften the blue edge and blend it into the rest of the denim on the right.
For the area between the two stitched rows, I used a Copic B34 to create random depressions in the seam--places where the cloth has shrunk and puckered a bit. In the center of each B34 patch, a spot of B95 deepens the shadow. In between the darker blue patches, I used the W1 to blend and soften, adding to the realism.
The background is finished; for the sentiment, I created a sewn-on tag by stamping the sentiment (from the Mona Lisa Moments Father's Day Centers set) in black ink on Kraft cardstock. (It occurred to me later that Grungepaper would have been the perfect paper for a faux leather tag, so if you have some, you might give it a try.) I repeated the pierced edges and gel pen faux stitching made famous a few years back by Julie Ebersole, stamping queen.
That tag needed to be grunged up a bit, so I sponged on some Tea Dye Distress ink and used the edge of my scissors to distress the cardstock edges and curl the corners.
Voila--jeans for Dad. This is a very simple technique--you can do it! Please leave a link if you do; we would love to see your handiwork. Thank you for visiting the CLASSroom.
