Denims and Faux Leather Belt

Hello.  I recently joined the Claritystamp New Design Stamp Club which sends out a new stamp every month with some ideas of how to use it.  The stamp for May was a pocket, and one of the ideas was to make a card in the shape of a pair of jeans with two hip pockets.  When I had nearly finished the card I decided it might look quite nice with a leather look belt so I decided to try the faux leather technique which I remembered Sheena Douglass doing.  This technique consists of spraying Kraft card with a mixture of glycerin and water until the paper becomes soft and pliable, and then using inks or stamps and some dry embossing, if you like, to add colour and texture.  If you would like to see Sheena demonstrating how to do this, it is here on You Tube.  I made this card for our DS whose birthday it was just recently, and I think this is quite a good idea for a masculine card, but it you want to make it more feminine you could use a brighter colour or paper piece with a flowery design stripes or spots or something.

I started the card by using Adirondack - Stonewashed, and Memento - Nautical Blue and building up the colour all over the whole card until the colour was as near to denim as possible.  The best colour to use is probably Faded Jeans Distress Ink, but unfortunatelty I don't have that one.  I then added the lines where the seams are using a Promarker in Indigo, with the fine nib in place.  I then added some piercing above the waistband which cannot be seen now the belt is there,  and under the seam line below the waistband, and to the right of the centre seam, and using the same Indigo Promarker I joined the holes up to make it look like stitching.  I finished this stage of the card by adding the shaping which I marked with a pencil bringing it in gradually until about level with the position of the pocket, and then curving in more dramatically and taking about 1" off the waistband.  When happy with the shape I cut the front first and closed the card and cut the back to match.

To give you an idea of where all the lines go,
the card is 6" square and the waistband is
about 1" in depth, the dip in the next seam is
about another 1" down, and the pockets are
placed approximately another 1/2" down from the central line.  The pockets are approximately 21/4" x 2", and these you could make from two rectangles of card.  They are placed about 11/2" in from the side.  These measurements are a very rough guide and I tend to do most things by eye and with a bit of experimentation.

I used some snippets/scraps of white card for the pockets and the three belt loops.  I did notice that the piece of card I used for the pockets being different to the pre-creased cards I use as the base card, took the colour differently and seemed to come up quite a bit darker, but I thought this seemed ok as the pockets stand out from the background more.  I used the Memento ink in London Fog, and using the Indigo Promarker again I went over all the stitching lines so they all match, and no piercing here either.  I then coloured them using the inks above.  The three belt loops are about 1/4" or so wide and just a little longer than the waistband, and I pierced the holes, made the stitching lines and coloured in the same way as above.

It was at this point that I decided that a belt would look quite nice, so I made the piece of faux leather.  For mine I used Walnut Stain and some Spiced Marmalade Distress Inks, and Craft Concepts EF - More Dots which seems to be out of stock at the moment, but I did notice that there is another CC folder called Ossie Dots, so perhaps this is a replacement for the other.  I made two strips and joined them under the middle belt loop.  My faux leather does not really have a shine because I do not have the spray varnish which Sheena finishes with which makes it look more authentic, but nevertheless I was pleased with the way it turned out.







I finished the card off by adding a sentiment plate on the belt using the faux leather.  I used the S/B Labels Thirty Three second smallest die and marked and cut out using the inside edge as a guide in order to get the right size to fit on the belt.  I fixed to a piece of dark blue card and cut by hand just a little bit bigger.  The sentiment was stamped using Black Archival ink, and I fixed one small black brad at each end before adhering to the belt.  The sentiment in the pocket was stamped on a snippet of white card using Memento Nautical Blue ink, and the edges softened with a little Adirondack - Stonewashed, and a Tonic corner rounder punch.  I did think about leaving it loose, but it was quite a tight squeeze to get it in the pocket, so I stuck it down.

This is a bit of a departure for me, but I wanted to make something special for DS so it was worth having to spend a bit longer than normal making it.  Now I know a few people will be heartily laughing by now because my cards do tend to be of the time consuming variety anyway.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by.

Pat  x

I would like to enter the following challenge:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop where we are asked to use snippets of card or paper, and I used up some bits of white card for the pockets, belt loops and sentiment.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.