Here's another idea for distressing Core'dinations card - place a chipboard shape underneath the card and hold it firmly in place whilst rubbing the surface with sandpaper. This works really well with the colours from the Black Magic Collection. Here I've used a star from Making Memories but it reminds me of starfish. Here's a closeup of the sandpapered star. The base card is the same coloured cardstock which I sponged with a slightly darker ink. And the finished card with some embellishments. The sand dollar is a stamp from Stampington & Co which I pressed into Delight Air Dry Modelling Compound and the starfish is a mould I cast in Vanilla Sculpey. ...

I'm having loads of fun playing with the Core'dinations card stock. Having run the Hocus Pocus card through the Cuttlebug, I started thinking about other ways it could be distressed. So here, I've lightly crumpled it and then sandpapered the ridges. This piece is from the Spell Caster Collection. But I didn't stop there - I also rubbed and inkpad across some of the ridges just to add a little more interest. There seems to be a slightly glossy finish to the Core'dinations card stock and my usually trusty Encore! gold inkpad seemed to smudge so I used Brilliance Galaxy Gold to highlight. Here's the finished piece with a few gold highlights. I used it as the background on a card I submitted to a challenge, so that card is under wraps at the moment but check back later and I'll post a different card using the same technique. This post edited 31/5/08: I've just had word that the card I made this background for was published in the June issue of Vamp Stamp Ne......

I've done a little more playing with this card stock since my last post. I wanted to try sandpapering the surface to see what sort of effect I'd get. Nothing technical about this - just scratch the surface with the sandpaper to reveal the hidden colour! Well that worked, so I pulled out the Cuttlebug and an embossing folder and ran a piece of card from the Hocus Pocus collection through. Once again the front is black and the back and core are another colour. I used 180 grit paper, but you'll get different effects with different grits. Because of the linen texture, it didn't completely remove the black surface but it still revealed the core colour in a distressed sort of way. I used the same card to die cut the letters and also to make the card. The back of the card is about 1cm wider than the front so that you can see the inside card colour which is black. The flower pic is a Rachel Greig black and white image from Stamp-It and I've used chalks to add just a hint of......

Whilst I was at Stamp Antics this week Jenny showed me a snazzy new card stock called Core 'dinations . What a great idea......... 2-sided card stock with a coloured core! After a quick explanation on the effects you can get by distressing the surface, I left the store with a few sheets to play with. So, what makes this card stock so different? Well, you can do all the usual things you do with regular card stock, but if you sand or tear it, you'll reveal the core colour. What I really like about it though is that it takes the guess work out of colour coordination because the core colour is a lighter shade of the main colour. I didn't have much time for playing when I got home but I couldn't wait until I did, so I just ripped right into it - neat effect. These are a couple of sheets from the Black Magic Collection. The front of each sheet in this collection is black with the back being the same colour as the core (the photo shows the back of the card stock). You can almo......