Tag It Tuesday Linky Party

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

It's time for our monthly linky party.  Woot!  May's theme was flowers.  I love love love flowers so I could have made a bazillion tags.  I showed great restraint by only making two!  I'm really bad at remembering to take step-by-step photos, so you'll have to take my word for what I did!

I started with two basic manilla shipping tags that had a light coat of gesso on them.  I decided to use some of my new Distress Paints for the first layer.  I used squeezed lemonade, abandoned coral and rusty hinge and then sprayed the tags liberally with water.  Then I simply sandwiched the two tags together to get the color on both of them.

Once the tags were dry, I used Timber Brown Staz On Ink to stamp some sweet sketchy flowers.  This stamp is from a new Dyan Reaveley set I got called Fancy Florals.  It was part of a set I got at Michael's that also included the leaf vine stencil.  

Before adding the leaves with light modeling paste, I used my bubbles stencil to spray some shimmer Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays on the tags.  

After the modeling paste leaves dried, I placed the stencil back over them and used my gelatos and a water brush to color the modeling paste.  Then I used a combination of a black Stabilo All pencil and a dark green Prismacolor watercolor pencil to give some definition in places around the edges.  I took the color directly from the tips of those pencils with my water brush.

These coral flowers are a variation of my ruffled scrunchy flower.  These are made from just three circles of patterned paper.  Each circle was pressed into the abandoned coral Distress Ink Pad to give it more color and then scrunched up.  I also colored some white sticky back pearls with a copic marker for a little extra interest.

I took a bit of the abandoned coral Distress Ink and bubble wrap to jazz up the back.

The second tag had more of a yellow tone, so I decided to spray my ruffled scrunchy flowers with my Color Bloom spray in Sorbet to add both color and shimmer to the flowers.

Look at that beautiful shimmer!

I added sticky back clear rhinestones to the centers of the stamped flowers.

I wiped up all the over spray of the Color Bloom spray on the back of the tag, then added some bubble wrap dots just for fun.

I realize as I'm looking at this picture that I haven't added any ribbon to the top.  I'll have to dig through my stash later to see what makes the perfect topper for these luscious tags.

Now it's your turn!  Show us your flower tags!



Don't forget I'm also hosting a tag swap over on my Google+ community that runs along with these monthly challenges.  If you're interested in joining that, please send me your email address so I can invite you to that community.

Thanks for looking at my blog. I appreciate all the wonderful comments everyone leaves. Happy Crafting!

WOYWW 310 / Gelli Plate Play

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

It's that time of the week where we have a happy little jaunt around the blogosphere and take a peek at the desks of other creative souls.  This fun trip is all courtesy of Ms. Julia at Stamping Ground.  Make sure you pop over there and check out the fun.

Yesterday I decided to pull out my gelli plate and have a little messy painterly fun.  I should have taken a picture during all the commotion, but I neglected to.  So here's how things looked this morning after all the cleanup and everything had dried.

This was the first time I had used deli paper, and I really like the way it pulls up almost all of the last bits and traces of paint from the gelli plate.  This was like a three-for-one blue light special!  I got about 25 6x6 papers, 12+ roll off sheets, and about 12 or so deli papers.  Not bad for just a little bit of play time.  I also used some metallic and pearl paints on a few passes and got some really nice shimmery effects.  I've tried to capture the sparkle in a few of the close up pictures, but for some reason my little camera has a hard to picking it up.

Here are some pics of the 6 x 6 papers.  I used old (and NOT square) 12 x 12 scrapbook papers that are white on the back.  My gelli plate is 6x6, so these work perfectly for me.

These are some of the deli papers.  Still learning about how to use these flimsy little sheets, so hints and suggestions are very welcome!

These are my roll off sheets.  I simply rolled my brayer off onto them and them flopped stencils on that had been pulled up from the gelli plate.  Some of these came out prettier than the actual plate pulls!  This is just plain old multi purpose 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper.

One thing I have discovered about myself is that I'm apparently more of a neat freak with my supplies than I realized.  As I finished using each stencil, I took it to my kitchen sink which was filled with several inches of water.  After I was done with my session, I went to clean the stencils all off.  While most of the paint came off fairly easily without much scrubbing, some just didn't.  For some reason, that really bothers me!  I know it has no bearing on their future usability, but it bothers me they now look "used!"  Silly me......

Thanks for looking at my blog. I appreciate all the wonderful comments everyone leaves. Happy Crafting!

Tag It Tuesday Theme for May

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

It's a warm muggy day here in south Texas.  Spring has sprung long ago (about February around here) and we are already getting entrenched in summer.   Ug.   While I do love the winter months here, it is nearly unbearable from about May through October, at least for me.

Thanks to our warm climate here, however, we have beautiful flowers in some shape or form blooming year round.  This brings a smile to my face because I love love love flowers.

Last month, our Tag It Tuesday theme was rain/showers/rainbows.  I gave you a huge hint as to what May's theme would be as well.  It should, therefore, come as no surprise that May's theme is FLOWERS!  After all, we celebrated April showers, so we simply must celebrate May flowers!

Here's a little photo inspiration for you.

So make your tag any size, shape or style.  Just be sure to incorporate your interpretation of flowers on it.  The linky party will be posted on May 19, so you have plenty of time to get creative.

If you are interested in swapping the tags you make, I can help with that as well.  I've created a google plus community with some of the regulars who have been making tags each month, as well as new participants.  If you would like to play along and swap tags with us, please let me know.  You can circle me on google + and message me there, or you can send me your email address through the "Contact Form" in the left sidebar so I can send you an invitation, as it is a private group.  I'd love to have you join us!

Thanks for looking at my blog. I appreciate all the wonderful comments everyone leaves. Happy Crafting!