Carol Quance #2 Oriental Tag ....

I don’t know why I like tags so much, but I keep coming back to them. I used a size 10 manilla tag.  

I started by choosing my colour scheme and began applying colour starting with Nougat as a base coat followed by Mermaid and then randomly applying the other colours. 

  

To apply, I used Cut N Dry Foam.  Sometimes I tap the paint on, sometimes I swipe it. I don’t follow any rule, just what I feel like doing.  I usually dry between each colour but not always, depending on the effect I’m trying to create.  The layers tend to get built up and then I knock them back if I don’t like what I’m ending up with.  In this case I sloshed (technical term) on some very watery Nougat. 

 It was then dried with the heat gun. This tends to mellow and fade the colour so you can build it up again. 

I put that aside to dry thoroughly and stamped up my main image.  This stamp is quite large and I don’t have big enough acrylic  blocks to hold it all so as you can see, I’ve used two so that I can get a good image.

  Once the image was stamped, it was coloured in with pens.  One useful tip – I always edge any images with black pen.  It helps ground the image to your background and make it look more finished.  See the before and after here. 

I felt the fish needed some highlights so I stamped with Versamark and embossed with some very old glitter embossing powder from my stash.

That’s not a black ink pad in the picture – that’s my disgustingVersamark pad and  it still works perfectly well!

To add some interest to the tag shape, I die cut it with the TH On the Edge Scallop die. I used the edge with holes on the tag and then cut two more from the die without holes.  I have a huge stash of background papers that I make from time to time using a combination of ink and paints and the other two scallop edges came from this.

More highlights were added with gold UTEE round the edge of the whole tag and also via a random oriental script stamp that I bought years ago from Ebay. 

 When I use UTEE I don’t like to melt it fully. It you don’t go the whole way, it stays melted in little ball shapes . It’s a technique I often use.

Finally I started putting the tag together. To create some dimension, I added 3d foam to the top half of the stamped image.  The fishes were glued at the front end and again, I used 3d foam to lift them off the background.

 The left side of tag seemed rather empty so I rummaged around in my stash and found some oriental metal tags.  This one I swiped with Versamark and dropped some more gold UTEE on it to keep the continuity of the tag. 

I like words on my creations so I had a play with Word Art on my PC and came up with this layout for “oriental.” I printed it on one of my background papers and the edges were coloured with Distress Ink to help blend it all together. Finally, I added some ribbon and some seam binding that I died myself with inks.

Well that's it for my 1st week, I do hope you have enjoyed my projects and would love to see you play along in the PaperArtsy challenge. I will be back the 3rd week in June.

Leandra Says: Ohhhhhh, I love this new stamp from Lynne P's sets, when i first saw it I thought this is the one I have to use first! And with blues and greens and a dash of gold! Just perfect, my preferred colour palette! The UTEE texture is superb!

Gillian Says:Love how you have used this LP stamp set, the colours and luxurious gold textures carry the Oriental theme throughout.

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