Do you love vintage style cards and scrapbook pages, but don't know how to get that look in your creations? Are you afraid that if you try, your attempts will just look like something a truck ran over? Don't get left out, wishing you could make beautiful vintage projects! Here are my Top 10 Tips to get you started.

1. Use your imagination. When I design a vintage card, I imagine I found some precious memento that is old, torn and dusty in my grandmother's attic. I experiment with adding new materials to re-enliven the memento, and end up with a lovely piece of vintage art.
2. Use lots of layers. They give depth and dimension to your piece. Put the layers together with little foam adhesive pads, like Stampin' Dimensionals, for a powerful 3-D effect.
3. Use soft, muted colors. Neutral colors, especially browns, contribute to that dusty look. Use them as background, accents or even the main color. When using other colors with browns, even the muted ones will look bright, so use the sponging technique below to soften the contrast.
4. Sponge everything! To make your papers look old, take a small piece of sponge, wipe it on an ink pad, and apply the ink lightly to your card stock or paper in a gentle circular motion. If you just dab it on, the ink will look splotchy. Use soft browns to make layers look dirty and dusty. Accent edges and folds with darker browns.
5. Make interesting backgrounds. You can use a page from an old encyclopedia or music book, or use background stamps with small flowery designs that look like old wallpaper. Then apply all the "aging" techniques in this list.
6. Make the layers look dirty. Sponging will accomplish this, but you can also use a Color Spritzer with markers to add speckles of color. The effect is like artistically placed paint splatter--think Jackson Pollack, only smaller and subtler!
7. Distress all the layers. Use a paper distressing tool, emery board, sanding block, small file--anything that will make the edges of the card stock and paper look frayed and worn.
8. Crumple and tear the pieces. Take the focal point and wad it up, then smooth it back out and sponge the folds. Make a little tear on one or two sides of the piece, and let the backside of the card stock show. Tear off a little piece of one corner, or crumple a corner and leave it folded to expose the layer underneath. Use adhesive to hold the crumples in place.
9. Add texture to the layers. Use embossing techniques, or stamp subtle images on card stock with ink of the same color.
10. Add antique-looking embellishments. Use brads, buttons, beads, lace, ribbons, crochet trim, etc.--whatever you think you might find in Grandma's attic.

Creating lovely pieces of vintage art is easy once you learn the techniques. These Top 10 Tips will get you started on a whole new paper crafting adventure of making new things look old!

Scrapbooking dies can be a lot of fun to make use of in all kinds of crafting projects. They are simple to store, fun to accumulate and give unlimited possibilities to the scrapbookers imagination. Despite the fact that there are several dies available on the market, I will feature a particular variety that has been a definite trend inside the market. This post will highlight the differences between the Spellbinders Nestabilities, Quickutz Nesting Dies, plus the Sizzix Framelits. All these mentioned, although comparable in shape, are top quality products and each have a special design.

Spellbinders Nestabilities

Lets commence with the Spellbinders Nestabilities. These had been the first of their kind to become released around 2007-08. They come six to seven in a package making storage a breeze. Around the outer edge with the diecut you are going to notice that it not just provides you the ability to cut, but also to emboss paper and stencil images with an inner edge. With utilization of a die cutting and embossing machine it'll permit the crafter to emboss a card and cut with 1 pass through. The crisp clear embossed appear on the paper is what makes the Spellbinders Nestabilities quite well-known amongst those who really like card making and doing pages. How you may also tell the difference in between a nestability and others is the color. They are coated in a copper color to tell apart them from the rest.

Quickutz Nesting Dies

The subsequent one I will discuss will be the Quickutz Nesting Dies. These are coated in a silver normal color as are all other metal wafer thin scrapbooking dies. There is no inner edge for embossing capabilities like Spellbinders, nevertheless it is going to cut beautifully and accurately. Since the diecut is thinner, Quickutz has put even more into a package ranging from four to twenty-two in a collection! This can be a great space saver at the same time and gives the designer much more sizes to work with in projects.

Sizzix Framelits

The last sort of die I will refer to are the Sizzix Framelits. These are the newest in the 3 mentioned right here inside the write-up. Getting released in 2011 at the Craft & Hobby Association, the Framelits have become a winner for people who use the Big Shot die cutting and embossing tool. The cutting edge on these scrapbook die cuts is right up against the inner edge. This implies that there is no way to emboss paper even a little bit with a framelit. The set comes with four to 7 dies in a bundle. They resemble more closely to the Quickutz nesting dies than the Spellbinders nestabilities in coloration and style.

All nesting dies discussed about here are metal wafer thin. They all possess the capability to layer, make window cards and frames. They all can fit through the following die cutting machines: Spellbinders Grand Calibur, Quickutz Epic Six, Provo Craft Cuttlebug plus the Sizzix Big Shot or Big Shot PRO. Several of these now work well with rubber stamps and have cross promoted with businesses such as: JustRite Stampers, Hero Arts, and Heartfelt Creations. This has opened up a complete new world of designs,cards,scrapbook pages, and other craft projects using the collaboration of coordinating dies and rubber stamps. I hope this write-up has helped you learn a little more concerning differences between these dies to further your scrapbooking knowledge!

To find out more on Nestabilities including other Scrapbooking Items you can visit CutAtHome for additional information. CutAtHome is an online paper crafting, card making, along with scrapbook paper crafting store. They are known for supplying only outstanding scrapbooking paper,dies, die cutting machines, embellishments, and stamps that coordinate with scrapbook dies.