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Faux Fabric Background

By Wanda Troupe
Hot Rod Scrampers
Advanced Scramping Team Designer

I love making my own backgrounds. While I certainly enjoy using some of the gorgeous patterned paper available these days, creating my own backgrounds is extremely satisfying to me. Faux Fabric Backgrounds are very easy to create using a few simple techniques. The key ingredient you need for this is textured cardstock. Using stamps, paints, a blending medium and light dry brushing touch lends beautiful results!

Supplies:

•  Daisy Delight (The Angel Company)
•  Alphas (Making Memories, Wordsworth, EK Success)
•  “Drama” foam stamp images (Heidi Swapp)
•  Noir Black Palette Inkpad (Stewart Superior)
•  Acrylic Paint – White, Red Spice, Kings Gold  (Plaid)
•  Acrylic Paint – Espresso (Making Memories)
•  Blending Medium (Delta Ceramcoat)
•  Blue Cardstock, 12”x12” (Die Cuts With a View)
•  Kraft Cardstock scraps (Stampin’ Up!)
•  Clear Shrink Plastic (Lucky Squirrel)
•  Gold Leafing Pen (Krylon)
•  1/8” Hole Punch (Fiskars)
•  ¼” hole punch (Regular paper hole punch (unknown)
•  Gold Brads (HyGlo)
•  Gold Buttons (Miscellaneous)
•  Miscellaneous Beads
•  Gold Head Pins (unknown)
•  Gold Jump Rings (unknown)
•  Paint Palette
•  3” Paint Brush
•  1” Sponge Brush
•  4” Tile (I use this to put my paint on and work from) - optional
•  Heat Tool (Uchida)
•  Scrappy Glue (Magic Scraps)
•  Microtip Scissors (Fiskars) 

Instructions:

1.     Lightly apply white paint to “Drama” foam stamps using sponge brush. (You don’t have to cover every single space on the stamp.) Stamping more than once before reapplying paint will give your background more dimension. Clean stamps using water.

2.     Lightly dab 3” paintbrush in white paint and tap off extra on the tile or scrap paper. When dry brushing the background to give a distressed or sanded appearance, use a very light touch; stroke the paintbrush over the paper as if it were a feather. Practice on scrap paper to get the feel of the technique if you’ve never used it before. Dry brush background in both directions to give a woven appearance.

3.     Squirt about a tablespoon of Blending Medium into one of the wells on the paint palette. Add about 1/8” teaspoon of Espresso paint and mix well. Apply this to “Drama” foam stamps using foam brush and over stamp white images on background. Dry brush background (as described in Step 2) using 3” paintbrush in both directions.

4.     Stamp title at top of page using foam alphas and Espresso Paint.

5.     Stamp flowers on Kraft cardstock with red and gold paint; cut out. Attach gold brads to small flowers and gold buttons to centers of large flowers. (I cut the shanks off of the buttons with regular nail clippers.)

6.     Stamp words on clear shrink plastic. Cut out and punch hole using ¼” hole punch at appropriate corners. Shrink as desired; I used a heat gun. Paint edges with gold leafing pen. Attach jump rings through holes. String beads onto gold head pins and attach through jump rings.

7.     Glue photos to background using tacky glue. Glue flowers to background as desired. Glue shrink plastic words to background, making sure the glue dries clear.

8.     Stamp name and date on Kraft scraps and glue below large photo.

That’s it! Experiment creating your own backgrounds. If you’re concerned about wasting backgrounds because you won’t like the design, practice on the back of your background paper, or on scraps that are similar. Have fun!

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