Mixed Media Tag for HLS

Hello everyone, and welcome to an exciting new challenge. Happy Little Stampers are launching a new Mixed Media Challenge today and the theme is Tag

This challenge is sponsored by Happy Little Stampers Shop

and the winner will receive a stamp set from HLS

I am delighted to be part of the new Design Team and I am new to mixed media so I jumped enthusiastically into playing with my materials, and I came up with this tag

I pulled out one of the first rubber stamps I ever bought from PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange), if you remember them. This stamp dates from 2001 but I believe the Company was bought out soon afterwards. This stamp has a dreamy, collagy collection of wonderful positive sentiments and I began by stamping it in Versamark ink on my tag. I then used several distress inks to colourr the tag and the words came through in a muted way. Once the ink was dry, I took a stencil from Glitzcraft and used their Emerald Green Glitter Frosting Medium to create the leaves and stem. Once that had dried, I used the Magenta medium to create the flowers. I didn't have the right colour of ribbon so I took some white organza ribbon and coloured it with two colours of distress ink to match the tag. I put two strips of ribbon through the tag and attached the back two to the tag with a tiny staple  To finish off, I stamped and embossed the greeting in white onto a strip of black card and snipped it up before attaching it with foam tape.

Whilst I had everything out, I made another background and die cut it into a circle to go on a second tag

 I cut a slightly larger white circle as a mat and then placed in on a Papertrey Ink tag die cut. I die cut a heart, from the leftover background, covered it with glossy accents and whilst it was still wet, I dropped extra fine iridescent glitter onto it.

A couple of things I learned:-

Mixed Media can be fun! I enjoyed it so much more when I just went with what I created rather than having a fixed idea in my head of what I wanted to end up with.

It is easy to colour ribbon with distress ink but it is a lot harder to dry it. I tried speeding up the process with my heat gun but the delicate ribbon just curled up and fizzled to nothing. I left it for two days but although it appeared dry, my fingers got covered in the colour, so be careful about transferring marks onto your work if you want to try this.

You will find lots of inspiration from the Design Team over at Happy Little Stampers and you can link up your tag creation there to be in with a chance of winning the stamp set. Our DT member Loll is having a 12 days of Christmas series on her blog at the moment and today is Day 3 so you will want to check that out.

I'd also like to play along with

Craft for the Craic - something glittery

Creative Artiste challenge - mixed media anything goes

Love to scrap challenge - Bling it

That's Crafty challenge - tag you're it

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs

Carol x