Fun with Tags

So I bought some manilla tags the other day.



Some = 1,000. Yes, really. They were a great deal, I'd been wanting some for a long time, and I have Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket. So what the heck!



Back in late fall, I took advantage of a special Andrea Sher (of Superhero Journal) offered for her Mondo Beyondo e-course. I'd been eyeing it for at least a year, so when it went on "sale" I just had to sign up. For one of the exercises, I decided to put the new tags to use.

First thing I did was line them up since I figured I'd create a bunch at one time. I used Golden fluid acrylic paint, some cosmetic sponges, a few 12" x 12" stencils and went to town.



I used the sponges to apply the paint through the stencils. They work great and I can pick them up cheap at Dollar General. I also used them to distress the edges.



Quick and fun. Gotta love it.




Here are the two main stencils I used.


"Art Is" by Crafter's Workshop


Random Dots by Donna Downey

Paint colors used:
Golden Fluid Acrylic in Nickel Azo Gold, Phthalo Turquoise, Permanent Violet Dark, and Quinacridone Red.

Art Journal - Reverberate

I've decided to dedicate more time to my art journal. Have fun, explore ideas, mediums, products, techniques. So yesterday I had the start of an idea and went from there. I knew I wanted to punch circles out of various things and stitch them to paper. That's all I knew. The rest I just made up as I went along.

I pulled a page out of my "for art purposes" copy of Jane Eyre as my base, grabbed my stash of various paper pieces and rifled through them. I found more book paper, ledger paper, a map, a receipt, a ticket, a tea bag wrapper (yes, I saved a tea bag-it was still attached to the wrapper), and a wine label. I have a number of wine labels I've soaked off bottles intending to put them in a wine journal for future reference but never got around to it. I like the idea of using them in my art journal even better.

I used various stencils, homemade "spray paint", Donna Downey's hollyhock stamp, acrylic paint, various tubes to get the red circles, masking tape, a white Sharpie paint pen, black pen and drywall tape.

OH! And I FINALLY set up my sewing machine in my art room and added stitching. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time and finally did. Yea, me!

I thought the circles looked like the were pulsing or echoing, and the word "reverberate" came to mind. Today, I went ahead and finished it up buy putting the page in my journal. I had a incredibly icky page that I covered up with more paint, and added the page. I was looking for my glue but saw the drywall tape and thought it might work, and I love it! I then added more stitching, zig zagging the book page directly into my journal.

I love the colors, repetition of the circles and the stitching. Very happy with this page!