Hi All - have you missed me? I've had a long break over September and October and because hubby has now retired we went away for a whole month to our lovely friends and 'home from home' in California. We didn't stay put the whole time though as we took a 4000 mile drive through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and back into California. It was an amazing journey as we saw so much variation in landscapes, the most incredible scenery in several national parks and some incredible ancient native American sites with settlements built high up in the craggy rocks and fantastic pueblos with one that so inspired me in terms of colours and design, it was amazing!
But back to reality and I'm sharing a long tag over at the Tando Blog today and am revealing more of the process steps here on my own blog.
But back to reality and I'm sharing a long tag over at the Tando Blog today and am revealing more of the process steps here on my own blog.
I began by collecting the substrates and embellishments together designing the tag as I went along.
I looked for a colour palette to inspire me and found this on Pinterest.....
.... and gathered my paints together to achieve similar colour tones, but as always I ended adding others to get exactly the look I wanted and I always have white, titan buff, raw umber and black to hand to change shades and tones.
I looked for a colour palette to inspire me and found this on Pinterest.....
.... and gathered my paints together to achieve similar colour tones, but as always I ended adding others to get exactly the look I wanted and I always have white, titan buff, raw umber and black to hand to change shades and tones.
I took each piece individually painting, texturing and colouring before putting back together again.
The tag was painted first with gesso, given a watery coat of orange and buff mixed together, dabbed with kitchen roll and then dipped in watery washes of the autumnal colours.
The media board with a hole in was gives a coat of brown acrylic and then white crackle paint, sanded and inked with ground espresso distress ink.
I took texture sand paste and covered the gasket and then stippled with green and brown paint.
The brick grid was painted with reds, bronze, orange and brown......
..... and I used raw umber, dark green, silver and grey on the camera, but you'll see it didn't make it to the final cut lol. Do you do that too, plan on using a piece and then leave it out at the end?
The two sets of leaves were also painted with the acrylics, dipped in some watery washes sanded and inked with brown distress ink, in fact everything got that treatment..
The tag really wasn't looking good in my eyes so I used an old Tim Holtz grungy number stamp with quinacridone gold and raw umber paints, sanded the edges and inked them and oh boy I am so much happier with it.
When I put it together I added the vintage photo that sits behind the gasket and media board ...
... and an altered little metal heart.
Thanks for checking in and if you can pop over to the Tando blog you will see the list of products I have used with links to their website.
Have a fabulous weekend.
hugs Brenda xxx
Have a fabulous weekend.
hugs Brenda xxx