AWOL

Remember the tag from last week that sat on the top of the huge pile of tags that I made on my first official play day, well I finally got around to finishing it. I had intended to post this at the end of last week but sadly I had a bit of an allergic reaction to something and my eyes became two slits in what looked like two golf balls. To say I felt very sorry for myself would be an understatement. The worst part was actually the side of my nose where my glasses sit. It was so sore that I couldn't wear my glasses which meant that I couldn't see a flipping thing.....hence no blogging, no tweeting, no playing and if I'm honest not a lot of anything. Anyways, after a trip to the doctor who prescribed magic cream, I am now feeling much better. I still look quite shocking but at least I feel better!!!! 

So just a little recap on last weeks experiments. First of all, I painted my tag with Fresco Finish Snowflake paint, which acts like gesso. I splodged some Hey Pesto and Claret Fresco Finish paint on my craft sheet and spritzed it with quite a lot of water then dipped my tag into it. I particularly liked the colours on this tag and was quite eager to get on and play with it a bit more so rather than leaving it to dry naturally, I blasted it with my heat gun. The little white dots that you see are where the hot air blew holes in the paint!! I loved it and was tempted to let the dots get big but I knew it would be a more usable tag with smaller dots so I had to show some restraint and turn the heat gun off.

  

Now to make some embellishments for my tag. I was so pleased with my dots, I really didn't want to hide them so I figured that if I made something that you could see through, that could be kinda cool so off I went in search of acetate. I die cut an acetate birdcage using Paperartsy's Birdcage die and was just about to stamp an image of the birdcage on top when I thought that it actually looked way too shiny against the matt finish of the paint so I took a sanding block and sanded the surface to give it a bit of a frosted look. You could still see through it but I liked this much better and went ahead and stamped my birdcage using Stazon ink.

  

You can see from the reflection on the acetate that it still has a reasonable shine to it but not enough of a glare to make you want to wear your sunglasses.

Next up, my birdie embellishment. I die cut a piece of cardstock from a manila tag using Paperartsy Songbird die and coloured it with Shabby Shutters Distress Ink. Using Ranger's Jet Black Archival ink, I stamped the flowers from Hot Pick1109 and coloured them with Prismacolor pencils.

 

The Secret Garden, the birdies in the grass and the two pence stamps all came from Hot Pick 1005, which is one of my all time favourite sets of stamps. I'm really liking how the bird turned out.....he's very different from my usual birdies and I'm pretty sure I would use this style of bird again.

 

I hope it was worth the wait, I wonder how long it will take me to finish the rest of the pile of tags.......there's only about thirty of them!!!!

As I no longer have a shop to sell you guys stuff, everything I used on this tag is of course available from my lovely friends Mr & Mrs Paperartsy and I think if you're quick, you might just catch the tail end of their sale!