Holiday Cheer with Maja Design

Hello friends!

I'm in today to share a Christmas project for Maja Design. I'm not much for Christmas papers as you would know by now, but their "Home for the Holidays" collection is absolutely delightful! For this month of December, I will be creating with this collection just to get into the festive cheer.

This is the tag I've made:

I've done some layering of papers from the 6x6 paper pad, as well as with the die cut tags and postal stamps. Again, my background work was simple - with some festive words stenciled with modeling paste and colored over with a matching blue in watercolor and paint

Some close-ups:

A chipboard ornament which I colored with glitter ink and stacked on top of a die cut snowflake from one of the more neutral colored papers from the paper pad. I chose red to highlight the color in the bottom-most piece of patterned paper and to use it as an accent color that really popped.

Layering of the tags which I fussy cut out. To create the snow falling on the tags, I added generous amounts of white glitter paint and allowed it to dry.

This postage stamp really warms my heart! It reminds me of exactly what we do in cold weather with our loved ones - we cuddle!

That's all I have for today. Have a great day ahead!

With Love from 13@rts

Hello 13@rts fans! 
I'm up on the blog today to share a tag that I made ​​with some fabulous products from the 13@rts store. I liked the peach and pink combination which I used for the August challenge so much that I've combined it with silver for the tag below.

For my background, it was a simple coat of gesso over a large manila tag that we followed my stencilling in, stamping and painting.

More details in the close-ups:

I used Ayeeda modeling paste and let it dry before I randomly stamped with a dragonfly stamp. Then it was light touches of apricot and raspberry matt paint watered down and touched up again for gradations in the tones. This was followed my my order splatters of Pearl Pink mist which I watered down at some parts for accenting and I finished off with some splatters of Splash! acrylic ink in white. For a final touch, I added some silver Microspheres sealed with gel medium.

The chandelier chipboard was given two generous layers of Old Silver metallic paint and one layer of silver glitter paint for that extra sparkle. I also dabbed some of the Silver Glitter paint over my flowers and on the mesh ribbon in the background. That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by! 

All Things Pink with Made With Love

Hello friends! How are you doing?

Today I'm up on the Made With Love blog and I have a post full of background techniques to share with you. If you have visited before, you would know that tags really stump me but I'm grateful to my DT co-ordinator Aida for always challenging me to step out of my comfort zone.

Here are the three tags I made for this month:



I've kept the embellishments on the first tag the simplest to show what I have done in the background. Basically it's blending three different colors of Distress Paints on a stencil over a gesso-primed manila tag. Keeping the stencil in place, I brushed distress crackle paint over to get the cracks over my painted portion. To make the cracks more obvious, I stamped the Distress Stain bottle down hard to create pools that would seep into the cracks and give a beautiful splatter pattern at the same time. Lastly, it's to brush some Art Anthology Sorbet paint over another smaller circle stencil.



For the second tag, a lot more work was involved.



It's not very obvious here, but I did a gel image transfer for my background using one of the patterned papers that came in my DT kit. Briefly, I brushed gel medium on my tag and adhered my patterned paper on with the side I want facing down, bearing in mind that everything will be mirror-imaged. When the gel medium has dried, I spritzed generously with water and rubbed off the patterned paper to reveal the image below. After that, it was dabbing the edges with different colored Distress Paints to blend them in and finishing off with a translucent coat os Art Anthology Sorbet paints.

My third and last tag has much fewer steps. I simply blended different colors of Art Anthology dimensional paints together along the length of the tag to get a gradated color wash, starting with the lightest shade from the bottom. Then it was stamping with embossing ink and heat setting gold embossing powder to get a nice raised image of a doily heart. Lastly, I brushed some AA sorbet paint over a heart stencil to give the effect of heat-embossed transparent glitter powder - it's a lot faster and less messy too!

So these are the background techniques I used for my tags. Hope you find them useful!

Supplies (available at Made With Love):

Art Anthology paints (Mi Bella, Big Dip O'Ruby, Cotton Candy, Buttercream, Splash)
Distress Paint (Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves, Victorian Velvet)
Distress Crackle Paint (Rock Candy)

Distress Stain (Brushed Corduroy)
Distress Glitter (Pickled Fence, Seedless Preserves)
Sizzix mini rosette die
Prima doily die
Prima Marketing Inc flowers, stencils and stamps
Blue Fern Studios chipboards
Kaisercraft patterned paper 

love,

Quick Tag for Marion Smith Designs

Hello friends!

It's been a crazy, crazy week with both the boys and me sick. But I managed to make a really quick and simple mixed media tag with some gorgeous Marion Smith Designs products.

Many of us end up with odd-sized papers after projects and I like to keep those because you never know when they come in handy. So I managed to steal about 30 min of craft time and use up some of those scraps.

To make this tag, I used papers I have from the Up and Away sheet from the Nirvana collection, as well as some bits left from Mad Tea Party. I took the Up and Away sheet and adhered it onto a product packaging as a backing and trimmed for a tag shape. Next was to tear some strips off the Alice paper from Mad Tea Party and layer them. I also cut out the floral basket from the same piece of Alice paper and did more layering with a cardstock doily and chipboard. 

The white cabbage rose resin from Junque and Gems. Love that they come in white so that I can paint them. A tip to share: the surface of this particular resin is very smooth and doesn't hold paint well, so I primed it with gesso before proceeding. After that, the 13arts matt paint and Silk Acrylic I used for coloring stayed on beautifully. I also tucked in a piece of Tattered Diamonds chipboard from Blue Fern Studios as the Alice paper in my layers had repeating diamond motifs. 

The floral basket which I fussy cut out, and you can see the repeating diamond motif which I borrowed from the Alice paper. 

That's all I have for you today. Thanks for dropping by and have a great weekend!

 love,