Rose-tinted glasses

Sometimes I come across images in magazines that I think would look great stuck on cards. Problem is the thin glossy paper tends to look like something torn from a magazine. Not surprising really, because it is thin paper torn from a magazine.

I was going through old magazines at the weekend and came across a rose-themed decorating shoot from an English Country Living mag that seemed too nice to toss into the recycling bin. Decided to try gluing tracing paper over parts of the images and see if this would give an old filmic or time-worn fabric quality I was hoping for. It did.

I used acid-free spray adhesive on the tracing paper and then stuck over the part of the image I wanted to use. I used a metal ruler to cut the image to size for a rougher edge than scissors would produce as I think it adds to the handmade feel.

I then had what I thought was another brilliant idea of using baking paper instead of tracing paper, as it's much cheaper. Result wasn't like looking at a beautifully aged photo through rose-tinted glasses but rather like squinting through coke bottle-bottom glasses. So that experiment, unsurprisingly, was binned.

This last photo shows the magazine page with the tracing paper attached before I cut/tore out the section I used.