Today was play day

Today was the very first day that I got to spend a whole day just messing around in my studio since I closed the shop. I have lots of projects on my "to do" list but one of the things high up on my list was to play around with the new colours of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints, Portfolio Pastels and Lynne Perrella stamps. If you don't know about Fresco Finish paint, you are seriously missing out on a fantastic product. The first release of colours were all opaque as they have a chalk base and a matt finish, very different from any other acrylic paint that I have used in the past and I just love them. The guys at PaperArtsy released a second set of colours towards the end of last year and most of these tend to be more translucent. The colour range is a lot brighter but because you can see through them, they are very versatile. If you would like them to be opaque like the first release it's simple, just paint them over one of the pale opaque ones.....just fabulous.

I tested out quite a few techniques today and made about thirty background tags!!!! I'll maybe go back to some of those later in the week but for now I'm going to share how I made three complete tags, step by step.

To prepare my tags, I tore up some masking tape and stuck it to my tags. I tried to avoid having the straight edges on the tape, so I tore up quite a lot of tape!!!!

Next step was to paint over the tape with Fresco Finish Snowflake, this acts like a gesso and gave me a blank white canvas to work on instead of the yellow colour of the tags and cream colour of the tape.

For my first tag, I chose Pumpkin Soup, Butternut, Cinnamon and Irish Cream and squirted a puddle of each colour on my craft sheet.

I then spritzed them with water and used a small paintbrush to mix the water into the paint but i tried to keep the colours separate rather than mixing them all together.

Then I dipped my tag into the paint a couple of times.

This was my first attempt at this technique and I felt that I had way too much paint!!!

So I took a baby wipe and simply dabbed away some of the excess paint. (my following attempts didn't need the baby wipe)

Next I decided I would try out my Portfolio Pastels.

These are a water soluble oil pastel which will blend together beautifully with water or by simply rubbing them with your finger. I chose to add a little of the pastels around the edges of my tag and over the areas of the masking tape to highlight the texture of the tape and I blended this with my trusty finger tool.

I stamped a few images from my Lynne Perrella stamps. The main image for this tag was from LP004. I stamped it with Jet Black Archival ink by Ranger. Heat set it with my heat gun and coloured it with the oil pastels.

I chose the small shell stamp from LP001 to match the shell theme on my main image and also coloured this with the Portfolio Pastels.

I added a few baubles from Tim Holtz Ideaology range and a few bits of ribbon for the finishing touches. Hopefully you will be able to see the texture created in the close up shot below.

The next sample was made the same way using Beach Hut, Hey Pesto and Mermaid Fresco Finish. Stamps are from LP003.

I even coloured the Tim Holtz Game Piece by painting it first with Nougat Fresco Finish and when dry colured the raised up parts of the piece with the Portfolio Pastels.

The final tag uses Guacamole, Mermaid and Eggplant paint and the stamps are from LP001 & LP004

   
Now for the good news!!! If you fancy a little dabble at making these tags, the guys at PaperArtsy have a sale on at the moment so you could snap up a bargain on the above products!!!! Simply click here for all the details.

Well I've had a fun day, I hope you have too.
Lin