Tearing Free Hand
Sometimes I like to tear free hand, especially when I don't necessarily want a straight edge or a perfect shape. When tearing free hand I like to use thicker card stock as I find I have a little more control over where the tearing goes.
Above I used free hand tearing for the matting. You can see that the lines are not straight and provide some misshapen mats. I used thick card stock that had color through the paper versus a surface color only which would have left white edges instead of the light purple.
On this page I used the free hand paper tearing as a layered background for the page. Again you can see the uneven edges and the color that comes through when using the heavier card stock.