"PLAYING TAG"

     Our summer is beginning to heat up today (90 degrees), so I'm "playing tag" where it's nice and cool -- designing tags for a "Get Your Wendy On" Challenge.  Wendy is Wendy Vecchi,  a talented designer, teacher, etc. in the papercrafting world and since I've taken a couple of classes from her in the past few years and have collected many of her rubber stamps as well as some new stencils from her line, I decided to play along.  I really like the look of stencils and like to combine them with stamps, which I have done on both of my tags.
     The first tag was colored with Antique Linen and Stormy Sky Distress Ink and and then antiqued around the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  I next stenciled a flower and some blades of grass using the Wendy Vecchi stencil "3 Fresh Flowers", and Crushed Olive and Dusty Concord Distress Inks.  I then decided to try the black Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste by stenciling along the right edge of the tag using a honeycomb stencil.  Next, I stamped a flower head and two butterflies with stamps from Wendy Vecchi collections.  After coloring them I cut them out and attached them to the tag.  I also cut out a blackbird with a Tim Holtz die for an added accent to the tag.
     I wanted to try some different things on my second tag.  I first
decided to stencil a background using the new brick stencil which I just received in the mail this week from the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  I used Antique Linen Distress Ink for the bricks and then colored the background with Stormy Sky and Tea Dye Distress Ink.  For something different, I mixed a drop of Dried Marigold Distress Ink refill into some white Embossing Paste and stenciled the flower head with it.  It wasn't quite dark enough, so after the paste dried, I colored it with Dried Marigold and Vintage Photo Distress Ink.  I stenciled the stem with Crushed Olive.  The fence and saying were from Wendy Vecchi collections and I used Memento Black Ink to stamp them.  
     The tags were a lot of fun to make and gave me a chance to play with some new materials and stamps and stencils I had never used before.  I really like the "folk art" look that I think I achieved.  I hope you enjoy them too.
     These tags are entered at:  frillyandfunkie.blogspot.com