April Tag of the Month

Hello Bloggers! Hope you are all doing well. After all the rain this past weekend it has been great to see the sunshine and enjoy being outdoors! I am so glad the winter is drawing to a close and the severe cold is behind us! Welcome April!
I wanted to share my "Tag of the Month" with you today.  I went all mixed media this month and created an Anna Dabrowska inspired tag. The tag I used in a
#10 large manila craft tag from Ranger. I prepped the entire tag with gesso first. I applied some light modeling paste through a few stencils to add some texture to the background. Then I grabbed all kinds of random embellishments from flowers, beads, old jewelry, metal gears, a paint brush tip, lace, alpha letters ... and glued them down. Once dry, I recoated the whole tag with gesso making sure to cover everything. I added a second layer of gesso in some of the more dimensional areas.

 

 This is kinda cool like it is but it's begging for color! So, next comes the fun part. I must admit, I let this sit for SEVERAL days before I added color. I was trying to decide what colors and then was afraid I would ruin it. However, learning is what allows you to grow as an artist, so I jumped in. I tried some ink sprays that have been around a long time but are new to me. Lindy's Stamp Gang Sprays are the newest addition to my arsenal of ink sprays!! Lindy's Stamp Gang has four types of ink sprays as well as embossing powders and other products. I used the Starburst Sprays which are two toned dye based sprays that have gorgeous shimmer. I decided to go with pink, teal and green sprays. Now, I didn't have teal yet in Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays so I used my Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Teal. I sprayed two shades of pink for the flowered cluster, then added the teal on the right side of the tag and then added several shades of green sprays to the left and bottom of the tag. I constantly had my heat tool going to dry each color before adding the next one so they wouldn't run together. If I added too much I used a baby wipe and took it off - this is the beauty of gesso!! Here's the final result ...

 

The textures on this tag are so cool and the shimmer sprays highlight the dimensionality of the tag. Here's some close-ups ...

 

 

It's hard to see but as a final layer I pounced a Versamark ink pad on random parts of the tag, added UTEE and heated it with the heat tool. Some of the raised areas now have a waxy appearance!!

I am so happy how this came out and am working on another one, applying lessons I learned from this tag. The layout is a bit different and I will share that with you soon along with some exciting news (times two)!! Thanks for letting me share this with you and I feel like this process has enhanced my love for mixed media! Hope you have a great week and I'd love to hear from you, anytime!!