Here’s a card I made decorated with a tooled paper leather frame. The process is quite simple but it does require some time. The resulting product looks and feels like aged tooled leather, great for decorating cards or making frames. The cowboy in the picture is my dad or my dad’s brother. Either way, it’s fun to see a little piece of our Colorado family history.



Supplies:

• 1 sheet of red/brown cardstock
• Brown dye ink pad (darker than the paper)
• Decoupage medium or water-thinned white glue
• Paint brush
• Basin of warm water
• Paper towels
• Newspaper
• Mosaic Frame stamp (Michael Strong Rubber Stamps)




Place the sheet of cardstock into the basin of warm water. Immerse it and let it soak for approximately 20 minutes.



Remove the saturated cardstock and gently crumple it into a loose ball. Do not squeeze it too tightly.



Uncrumple the cardstock and lay it flat. Using the palm of your hand, pat the cardstock until it is smooth.



Impress the stamp into the wet cardstock. For best results, place the cardstock on a cushion of newspapers topped by a paper towel and place it on the floor. Using card to balance yourself, stand on the rubber stamp to make a deep impression. Repeat if you wish.



Let the cardstock air dry.

Using your finger, protected by a folded paper towel, ink the dried cardstock. The ink will color the raised areas.



Let the ink dry before applying a thin layer of decoupage medium with a paint brush.



Allow your tooled paper leather to dry before cutting it up.



To find the products mentioned in this article and shown in these layouts, check with your local scrapbook retailer. Browse our Premier Retail Stores for coupons to a store near you.

Michael Strong is a born doodler. He filled the margins of most of his school work with drawings of all description and usually caught the wrath of his teachers for not paying attention in class. A career in art was inevitable. Eventually, his hobby of rubber stamping turned into little rubber stamp company. Working from his home, Michael’s little company has grown and flourished. His work has been published in national magazines and he is the author of two craft books Don’t Throw That Away! and Paper Greenhouse. Michael was lucky enough to make many appearances on The Carol Duvall Show highlighting his love of turning ordinary household ephemera into works of art. He now appears on TV Weekly’s The Scrapbook Lounge, a web based venue for paper crafting and scrapbooking. Most of Michael’s time now is devoted to traveling around the country and on the high seas teaching rubber stamping to his beloved fellow stampers. His little doodles have become his passion which he happily shares with everyone. http://www.strongstamps.com.