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Learning the “Vintage” Look

Aloha, all!

     As you can probably tell, I tend towards the kinds of designs that have clean lines and some symmetry.  I like to have neat edges and have papers and ribbons and such lying nice and flat on the card or scrapbook page.  But I've noticed in many of my craft magazines as well as in Stampin' Up!'s publications and samples, the "old," "vintage" look has become very popular.  I'm sure there's some psychology in that as we go through some economic and environmental hard times.  But regardless of the underlying cause, I'm really going to work to try to learn how to take what I'm most comfortable with and turn it into a more vintage look.

     Today's project is my first try at this in a side-by-side manner.  Let me back up a bit and say that I really like making covers for my 5" x 8" lined note pads and I've had instructions for making this posted here almost since I began my blog.  It just looks so, well, plain, to have the pads just sitting around with bare paper on them!  And my favorite theme to use for note pad covers is the musical "note."  For awhile, Stampin' Up! had a wheel with whimsical musical notes on it, and there was a great stamp that said, "Just A Note."  Perfect for that.  Well, this year, there's a new wheel with musical notes, but they've done themselves one better and have a great set of printed Designer Series Paper that has musical notes on it.  It's one of the sheets in the Newsprint Designer Series Paper set.  Hooray, I have my theme again!  And here are the two projects that I've made with this idea of trying out a Vintage Look when my first instinct is to make something with nice, neat, straight lines.

     My first try with the new papers is on the left, and the second one, with a bit of stepped up Vintage look, is on the right.  Both of these projects use basically the same products:  Newsprint Designer Paper, Lovely Letters Alphabet, Rich Razzleberry Patterns Paper, Rich Razzleberry Card Stock, a Border Punch, and some Stampin' Up! Ribbon.

     Here's my first try at this with my traditional clean-cut look.  Can you tell I took this photo during the sunset last night?  Love the lighting!  Anyway, I made some nice clean cuts here, and used plain Very Vanilla card stock on which to stamp the letters.  The border punch is the Scallop Edge Border Punch, and the letters are nicely lined up with some Stampin' Dimensionals popping them up over some 1/4" Rich Razzleberry Grosgrain Ribbon.  The letters are cut into 1-1/8" squares and I punched the mats with the 1-1/4" Square Punch. 

     Now let's check out the Vintage look:

     To begin, I roughed up the edges of both pieces of Designer Series paper – the Newsprint as well as the Rich Razzleberry Patterns.  Then I sponged Rich Razzleberry ink from a Classic Stampin' Pad all over both pieces of paper.  Instead of using the Scallop Edge Border Punch, I used the Eyelet Border Punch.  The letters are the same color and size as in the plain card, but I used some more of the Newsprint Designer Paper on which to stamp them.  Then, instead of some plain grosgrain ribbon (think clean lines) I used Very Vanilla Taffeta Ribbon which I first ruffled by pulling a center thread through it and then mussed up a bit by applying some Rich Razzleberry Ink with a sponge.  Finally I applied the letters NOT in a straight line (straight lines were not allowed in this project, well, except for the note pad itself).  Angled up a bit they seem to fit more with the vintage look.

     What do you think?  Which do you like?  If I get at least 10 comments about this post by July 24th, I'll pick one commenter who can choose one of these note pads for a gift!  Check back here next week to see who wins the note pad!

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