Stamped background page for layout

At the crop yesterday, I was winding down for the day and decided to mess about with a bit of background stamping.  I used a sheet of Bazzill in Natural as the base.  Most of my backgrounds start the same way - using an ink duster brush to apply and blend distress inks in Antique Linen and Tea Dye.  It looks a bit splotchy and uneven at this point, but that's OK :-)

Next step is the crackles - swoosh distress ink onto a splotchy shaped area of your crackle stamp (I use Indigo Blu) in Tea Dye and apply randomly over the page, especially in the clearer areas between the previously applied inks.  A non-wood mounted stamp is more flexible for this as you can hold in the hand to apply.  I also tried using Antique Linen for some of the crackles.

Next I added the 'speckles', again using Tea Dye and a Paperartsy stamp.

 Now for the corner stamping.  I knew I wanted to have a graduated stamped image, fading out naturally towards the edges and disappearing into the background.  The ink was Kaisercraft 'Vintage'.  The stamp I chose to use is a tile pattern by Hero Arts for the Basic Grey 'Spice Market ' range - another new purchase used!  I applied the ink to one corner and upwards/along from that corner, then blurred the edges of the ink with a baby wipe before stamping.  This gives the 'fade-to-background' effect at the edges of the image.

Finally I blended some Brushed Corduroy distress ink around the edge, then went over the whole lot lightly with Antique Linen again, plus a bit more Tea Dye.

There will be more stamping on this sheet, but that will depend on how the layout is arranged, so for the moment, that's it.  I am rather pleased with it :-)