March Tag - Tim's 2016 Tag Challenge

March Tag 

Hi everyone,

Wow… what a rollercoaster I’ve been on with the tag this month. As usual, all the techniques are detailed on Tim’s blog and here is my interpretation.

Slightly different but you’ll see why if you fancy reading on….

Playing with corrugated cardboard is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile now, but I soon realised that I was going to be limited by the dies in my stash. In the end I decided to use the Ranger Tattered Poinsettia die but found that even using this wouldn’t be quite that straight forward if I wanted to keep the cut images on the tag, which of course I did. I resorted to using the die as a stencil and fussy cut the image with a craft knife,  smoothing the edges gently with an emery board.

I die cut the poinsettia die in ivory card
and then used these as templates for the images I wanted on my corrugated cardboard.

I had a great time peeling away the 
top layer to reveal the corrugation underneath.

Copious splatters with Distress Ink and a sheet of the rich bronze coloured foil from Ranger’s Vintage foil gave my top tag the look I wanted. In the process I’ve found that Tombo multi liquid glue is a good substitute for adhering the foil sheets.

I used a couple of dies from the Sizzix Multi Media die set (love these)  for my base tag, covering this first with some music paper from my stash and giving it a good coating of Multi matt Medium. 

And now is when all the fun started…… using gelattoes  to get the same effect Tim did on his tag was more than a challenge (well it certainly proved so for me). My trial runs on scraps of pearlised ivory card worked beautifully but every time I tried it on the tag it looked awful. Oodles of coffee, a heavy atmosphere blue air and three attempts later I eventually came away with something that I was remotely happy with.  Obviously I am not taking easily to this year’s resolution to embrace imperfection..lol.

This was after one attempt when I wiped the tag back to try again. 
I loved the effect I managed to get on my practise piece, a scrap of die cut card,
but I just couldn't replicate it on the tag itself.

This is the effect I eventually ended up with....It didn't work for me!

I used hessian ribbon from my stash and a ranger Word Band… I thought the word was appropriate given the corrugated cardboard was salvaged from the inside a box of washing powder and the tag itself was salvaged from the bin numerous times! 

BUT the end result still wasn't working for me....... So I finally decided to use my test pieces runs as embellishments on the tag, edging them first with ink using a black marker pen before skewering them with an ornate brad from my stash and attaching to the tag with a dab of hot glue. Hey presto, I loved the effect.

You can still see the colouring of the 
background behind the poinsettias 

Finally I kept in with my Spring colours by dying a snippet of white seam binding dyed with DI….loved how bright this turned out. 

I used a metal eyelet for the hole at the top
which I dabbed with bronze DI to tie in with the bronze vintage foil.

As usual I backed my tag with black card to frame it and neaten the back and then treaded a small charm of Tim’s march tag logo to the ribbon using a jump ring.

Did I embrace imperfection?  Well, actually,  in the end I did because I decided that however this tag turned out, love it or hate it,  I was going to post it and now as I look at the end result I’m delighted with it…. sooooo, I’ve learnt a good lesson this month; It’s worth it not to give up (smile).

Here are a few more pic of the finished tag:

But before I get too smug, here are a couple of pictures of another attempt I had making this month's tag:

I decided to try using a heart as my die cut image and a delicate floral die
over the music paper I used to cover my base tag.

You can just about see the delicate die I used in this picture. 

Again the colouring didn't work for me,  the heart lacked any depth despite how hard I tried the shading.  In the end I tried filling the recess with Glossy Accents. ...... C'est la Vie.

Thanks sooooo much for popping by and reading my post. Please leave a comment if you have a moment,  I love hearing from you.

Happy crafting,

Hugs

Carol. xx