Papparazzi

I have a new technique that am absolutely in love with. I'm not sure what it's called so I call it fraying :) I use it on a lot of my photo mats to give a little bit of a messy look and I love the dimension it adds to the photos. Here's a layout I used it on.


And here's a close up of the photo mat (the teal mat) that I used the fraying technique on.

So I guess you are wondering how to do this cool technique, well it's really quite simple. I will warn you though that it is messy so make sure you do it over the garbage can. Now there are little tools out there that you can buy but I find my scissors work just fine plus I can control how much fraying I get based on how hard I press with the scissors. First thing you do is cut your photo mat to size you want. Next you take a pair of sharp scissors and open them all the way. Then hold the scissors at the swivel point with the blades facing away from you. Place the top blade at a forty-five degree angle to your photo mat. Drag the blade of the scissors in short strides down the photo mat working towards yourself. You can keep going over the same spots until you get the desired look you are aiming for. I recommend trying this a couple of times on a piece of scrapcard stock until you are comfortable. I hope you have fun getting a little frayed just like me.