{Spotlight Project} Shery Creates a One Layer Mixed Media Christmas Tag

I thought I'd take a break from making Christmas cards and create a few Christmas tags that I can use for gift giving. In today's project, I'm sharing one of those tags and some photos of the steps I took to create it. I used my favorite holiday stamp, the Christmas flower stamp, plus words from the Joyful and Christmas Candles sets.

When it comes to paper crafting, I really am a one layer girl. I'm no good at layering papers and elements; if I try to introduce one, two, or more layers of paper onto a card or tag, my brain sort of stops working. The whole process of creating something becomes agonizing and stops being fun for me. Sometimes I will push myself to layer, but I end up taking a long time to finish and I'm often not happy with the end result. So knowing that, I went with what I know is comfortable and fun for me to do: a one layer mixed media tag :o)

To create my tag, I started with a 9" by 12" sheet of 140-lb cold-pressed watercolor paper by Canson. I was able to cut out 8 tags from that sheet, with each tag measuring 3" wide by 4.5" tall. I rounded the corners with a corner rounder punch.

STEP 1

I stamped the poinsettia in coffee archival ink on the tag several times, masking as I went along. Because I decided beforehand that I was going to be watercoloring, I went with this waterproof ink.

STEP 2

Next, I watercolored the background with various Distress inks. I initially watercolored broken china, mustard seed, and spiced marmalade.

STEP 3

I watercolored the poinsettias with barn door, fired brick, mustard seed, peeled paint, shabby shutters, and pine needles. I started with the lighter/lightest color and worked my way up to the darkest, drying the layers with my heat tool before adding more layers. You will notice that my background doesn't look so yellow or bright as the photo above. I wanted a more rustic, vintage look so I watercolored antique linen, vintage photo, and frayed burlap after the first layer was dry.

STEP 4

Next, I picked a few of the words in the Joyful set and stamped them on the background in frayed burlap. Once I was done, I sponged frayed burlap and vintage photo around the edges of my tag. I also decided to give the poinsettias some shimmer so I went over the leaves with a thin coat of pearl red Twinking H2Os. It's hard to see in the photo, but the poinsettias have a pretty shimmer in person.

STEP 5

I wanted to give the edges of the poinsettias a little definition and depth so I darkened those edges a little by applying water-soluble oil pastels. First I applied rust and went over it with a damp brush to even it out. Then I applied white and did the same thing. 

STEP 5

I did some spattering on the tags and for that, I used red and green Inktense blocks. I used a damp fan brush and flicked it against the blocks to create the spatters. I also stamped the sentiment in jet black archival ink and finished the tag by punching a hole at the top and looping a burlap ribbon through.

There you have it. Hope you enjoyed this short tutorial! See you in a couple of weeks!

Stamps Shery used in today's project:

      

Joyful is the current set in the STAMPlorations bi-monthly stamp club! Join the club and get this set shipped to you for free wherever you are in the world! Read more about our stamp club here. We've got lots of perks, including a free 4" by 6" stamp set every 3rd shipment. We'll be adding a few more perks pretty soon, which means the club price will go up...but current club members are locked in at just $21 every two months!


Prize alert! Leave a comment in this post for an entry to our Spotlight Projects random drawing for October. We'll pick a winner and announce it on November 2! You can read more about it here.