Tag Art with Alcohol Inks and Die Cuts

Ellen Hutson has hosted her annual 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist.  Is this really the fifth year?!?!  Ellen and her designers have shown step by step guides for some really fun and gorgeous tags.  It's always a pleasure to see how Ellen's talented team inspires and this year they've shown more fabulous work.  Ellen has offered amazing prizes for each day's commenters with a whopper of a prize for showing how you've been inspired by entering one or more of your own makes.

I've played, got inky, brought out some products that I haven't used for a while and I have a few backgrounds ready for embellishing.

Here's my tag as inspired by Day 12 by Ellen Hutson . . . This tag has an alcohol inked monoprint background, an ornament die cut window, stamped and die cut branches and it was a ton of fun to see it come together.

I put a few dots of Denim, Stream, Stonewashed, Meadow and Lettuce Alcohol Inks onto my non-stick craft sheet.  A few dots of Pearl Mixative seemed like a lovely addition.  I used Sizzix' Bigz Tags and Bookplates die cut to shape my glossy cardstock then swiped that tag through my alcohol ink layers.  Alcohol Ink dries sooo fast that I kept swiping until there was no white showing through my tag.

My small original green Sizzix ornament die was the perfect size to fit my tag and so I die cut a window from my monoprint tag.

I dug out my Stampers Anonymous Letter to Santa and Mini Holidays stamp sets and began stamping the branches along the edges using archival inks in Versafine Toffee, Ancient Page Pine and Archival Ink Library Green.

A few die cut pine branches from Sizzix' Tattered Pinecone die were colored with the same archival inks as the stamped branches.  Small amounts of Claudine Hellmuth's Studio Gesso were painted along some of the branches.

The Christmas Greeting sentiment added at the bottom of my tag was included in a free stamp set with October 2013's Cardmaking and Papercraft magazine.

I adhered a QuicKutz ric-rac die to my non-stick craft sheet then swiped Mountain Rose and Copper Acrylic Paint over it.  I removed my die cuts before that paint started to dry around them.  Once that paint dried, I layed a piece of packing tape over it, using my bone folder to adhere it well.  As I pulled the tape up, the dried paint stuck to my packing tape!  Where my ric-rac die cut left empty space, I filled it with white Perfect Pearls.  I tried to adhere a 1/8" strip of wonder tape between the ric-rac but had some trouble with that.  Where possible, I tried to make a line of sparkle using Sparkle N Sprinkle's Golden Silver glitter.  More Golden Silver glitter filled the top of the ornament for additional sparkle.  That colored tape adhered to the back of my tag and filled my ornament window nicely.

Finally a Sizzix star reinforcement holds some Adornments' blue/green ribbons and fibers.  The sparkling gold ribbon accents the gold from my ornament.

Take a look over at the CLASSroom and be inspired to get inky and experiment while you create your own Christmas tags . . .


I'm entering this tag into the following challenges:
Ellen Hutson's the CLASSroom "12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist" (here)
Craft Your Passion "Christmas ABC - Anything But a Card" (here)
Simon Says Stamp and Show "Stamp Out" (here)
Divas by Design "Anything Goes" (here)
Cute Card Thursday "Christmas Catch Up!" (here)
Paper Crafting Journey "It's Christmas Time" (here)
Sweet Stampin' "Last Minute Christmas" (here)
Dream Valley "Christmas" (here)
Through the Purple Haze "Here Comes Christmas Day" (here)
Crafting with Dragonflies "Christmas Tags" (here)

"Top 3" Jan. 15, 2014 Crafting with Dragonflies

Ina of Crafting with Dragonflies chose the top 3 and said, "19 -Rose C - Love all the colours and elements here with the mixed media."



As always, I'm so glad that you stopped by to visit!

~ Rose