Heart Felt Tag with Dylusions by Karen Bearse

Hello Karen Bearse here today with a fun, inky heart felt tag. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and this is the perfect attachment for your present, or to go on your scrapbook page or in your art journal.  With a few simple techniques you can make your loved ones a tag or make a card.

This bright and cheery tag has a picture of my kids when they were younger. I started this with a few product ideas and went from there.

Dylusions are a bright, highly pigmented acrylic paint with a rich smooth finish. The Mixed Media Tags are the perfect surface to work on. The large tags size #10 are 8.5” tall which allows for lots of fun. I wanted to play with the Southern Ridge Trading Co. stencils, chippies and maybe some sprays.

Start by picking up a pea size amount of paint with a baby wipe, a little goes a long way. Smooth the paint, in this case Bubblegum, over the tag. Excess paint can be wiped on another tag or a wipe off journal.

Choose a second colour and using a cosmetic foam and a small amount of paint (Squeezed Orange) dab through a SRTC stencil (6x6 Rain Drop).

Repeat with a 3rd colour (crushed grape) and a different stencil (6x6 Fish Net). The beauty of this paint is it dries quickly, the colours work well together and each layer is vibrant. I used the heart chippie as a stencil & spritzed with Dylusions sprays in White Linen. This spray colour is unique & has a metal ball in it that needs to be shaken well for best use. Once the white was dry I spritzed again over the heart chippie in Crushed Grape.

I liked the look of the spray so added more using the small 3x3 X stencil. Once this is nice and dry doodling is a great way to go. I achieved this by simply outlining the shapes & adding some marks here & there. I did add more stencil work with Vibrant Turquoise paint & the 3x3 4 leaf clover stencil. I love the pop of this colour and carried it through the rest of the tag.

Time for some chippies!! First up was one of the gear chips which was simply painted with the turquoise paint and distressed with the pink. The heart charm was painted with gesso as a foundation & than painted with the pink. Love how this looks. These were adhered through the tag hole.

Emboss the Tanessha Heart. Use the paint to adhere the emboss powder. I did this in sections, painting each section with different colours as in the photos, than sprinkling some Silvester Kracher on letting some of the paint show through. Black Marble, Bubble Pink & gesso. Trim your photo to fit & adhere underneath the heart. Adhere your favourite word to the heart.

Let’s add flowers. The beauty of making a tag with these techniques is the ability to customize any flowers to match. Simply spritz white flowers with water & dab on same Dylusions Sprays that were used on the background. Each flower got it’s own colour & was sprinkled with a bit of Charred Gold Emboss powder & heat set. This gave the flowers depth & a grungy look.

The final touch was a small tag, altered using the same paint techniques & colours, with my title attached. Adding dots around the tag gave it that extra something. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial & try it out on either a tag, card or art journal page.

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- 6x6 Rain Drop Stencil

- 6x6 Fish Net Stencil

- 3x3 4 Leaf Clover Stencil

- 3x3 X Stencil

- Taneesha Heart

- Wood Words of Christmas: Joy

- Gears 2

Other Supplies Used:

- Dylusions Paints: Bubblegum Pink, Squeezed Orange, Crushed Purple and Vibrant Turquoise

- Dylusions Sprays: White Linen, Bubblegum Pink, Squeezed Orange, Crushed Purple and Vibrant Turquoise

- Dylusions Mixed Media Tags Size #10

- Emerald Creek Craft Supplies: Silvester Kracher Embossing Powder, Charred Gold Embossing Powder and Metal Heart Brads

- Prima Marketing Flowers

- Tombow: Liquid Aqua Glue

Happy crafting!

- Karen

Love Letters Storage Box with Deb Riddell

Hello, Deb here to share with you another project featuring some of my favourite embellishments and stencils from Southern Ridge Trading Company for our current challenge.  I used the Mini Nested Stamp Frames, Iron Hinges 1 and the 4 Leaf Clover stencil in the making of my card or letter storage box.

The mini nested stamped frame was the inspiration for this project; the stamp shape of the frame made me think of letters which led me to love letters, which led me to the idea of making a box to store those letters in and the rest was history!

I started out by choosing a paper from Tim Holtz’s Correspondence paper stash and then used the Postage Stamp die with a Mini Heart Mover & Shapers die inset to cut out my postage stamp background.  I then embossed the die cut with Southern Ridge’s 4 Leaf Clover Stencil and highlighted the embossed areas with Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

One of the gents from Tim Holtz’s Possibilities stamp set was stamped onto white card with Black Soot Archival ink and clear embossed.  The background around the stamped image was then coloured with more Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

I chose the third largest nested stamp frame and coloured it with Blueprint Sketch Distress stain and sealed it with some satin varnish once it had dried (sorry, I got carried away and forgot to take an in progress picture so here’s a closeup of the finished project).  As you can see, the gentleman was centered behind the heart cut out on the postage stamp die cut and then the mini nested frame was centered overtop of the heart.

I repeated the same colouring and sealing procedure with one of the decorative hinges from the Iron Hinges 1 set (again no in progress pics, sorry!) and then chose the ‘love’ Typed Token and coloured it with some Aged Mahogany Distress paint.  A small heart stud from my stash was coloured in the same way and adhered overtop the hole in the Typed Token with E6000 glue.

I stamped ‘love letters’ from a Fiskars stamp set onto a vintage ticket I had in my stash.  The red ticket was a bit bright for my layout so I first coloured the ticket with some Barn Door Distress ink and then added some Frayed Burlap.

I chose some vintage ephemera from Tim Holtz’s Emporium Ephemera pack and coloured the edges with a bit of Frayed Burlap Distress ink.

All of the elements were added to the postage stamp die cut background.

And the assembled collage was then adhered on to the top of a box I made using papers from Tim Holtz’s Crowded Attic paper stash.  I randomly stamped some script over the top of the box using the Ledger Script stamp and Jet Black Archival ink and then drew around the edge of the stamp die cut with a black Pigma Micron pen to give it some definition.

I now have a box to store some of my completed cards and tags rather than having them in a plain old file folder, yay!

Hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing my love letters storage box made with more of my favourite supplies from Southern Ridge Trading Company.

Southern Ridge Trading Company Supplies Used:

- Mini Nested Stamp Frames

- Iron Hinges 1

- 4 Leaf Clover stencil

Other Supplies Used:

- Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Postage Stamp die; Mini Hearts Movers & Shapers die

- Tim Holtz/Advantus: Correspondence paper stack; Crowded Attic paper stack; Typed Token; Emporium Ephemera pack

- Tim Holtz/Ranger Ink: Distress ink; Archival ink; Distress paint; Distress stain

- Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous: Ledger Script stamp; Possibilities stamp

- Fiskars: Love Simple Stick stamps

- Pigma Black Micron Pen

- Miscellaneous: Scissors, E600 glue, adhesive, Aleene’s Box Maker, paper cutter, paint brush, satin varnish, metal heart stud

I hope that you will be inspired to join in our My Favourites challenge.  You have a chance to win 4 designs from the online store - chipboard.ca - a $20.00 (before tax) retail value of YOUR OWN CHOOSING!  Can’t wait to see what you link up, happy creating!

Deb xo

Journal Cover with Chippies with Karen Bearse

I love making books. Mini scrap books, art journals, smash books. The best part is designing the covers. Most often I like to do this at the end of the project once I get a feel for it. This month’s Southern Ridge Trading Co… challenge theme is “your favourite”. I have a few in this project, from chippies to techniques. This is a fairly easy tutorial that can be applied to your book project.

I decided to cover a composition book that I am using for Simelle Laine’s Learn Something New Every Day, #LSNED. A while back I received this mixed paper pack from Recollections and thought this paper would look great for the cover.

I adhered my paper and added a piece of washi tape down the side and covered with decoupage glue so it will stay down. Adding a little bit of paint using a foamie through a few stencils, in some random spots just cause. I love the new circle stencil “Cheerio”.  For the chippies I did some of my favourite techniques.

One of my new favourite techniques for chippies is to use alcohol ink. Cover the chipboard with gesso, let dry and dab alcohol ink, using felt on a dabber.

For the # tag paint with gesso, dry and paint with Dylusions. Dry and add some stencil marks with gesso on a foam piece. The key is to use very little paint so a sharp image is achieved. After this was adhered I decided to add a layer of glossy accents to help the chippie shine. Just add the glossy accents in a heavier coat then if you were to glue, it is self-leveling. If there are bubbles just pop them using a pin. Let dry naturally.

Gears are one of my favourite things & I wanted to add more but I also wanted the paper to stand out. This is also one of my favourite techniques as it is so simple. Just paint using Distress Paint dabber in black. Let dry & add highlights of metallic. Done.

Bird chippies- hee hee love this! I wanted to do something different so I again painted with gesso. Why all the gesso you ask? The chippies are beige and affect the colour of anything you put on them. If you gesso them first you start with white so your colours are real. Plus gesso is a foundation that most products work well on. Once the gesso was dry I stamped in archival ink and added Distress ink with a dabber sponge. Adding wire and some beading to the large bird gave it a nice touch.

Lastly assembly time! Use a strong glue to adhere everything down. I like glossy accents for this. I used letters from my stash for the title and added some doodle lines. Finished my project by distressing the edges with some paint. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Chippies just add great dimension to any book!

Southern Ridge Trading Co Supplies Used:

Chippies:

- Small Bird mix

- Symbols #1

- Med. Gears

- Skeleton Leaves

Stencils:

- 3” - 4 Leaf Clover

- 3" - Cheerio

- 3" - X

Other Supplies Used:

- Recollections: Paper & Title letters

- Ranger: Distress Ink, Glossy Accents, Dylusions Paint, Alcohol Ink, Archival

- Gesso

- Seth Apter: Stamp

- Posca: White pen

- Eileen Hull for Sizzix: Flower Dies

Remember to play along in the monthly challenge over on the Southern Ridge Trading Company blog. Each month enter for your chance to win 4 designs from the online store - chipboard.ca -$20 (before tax) retail value of YOUR OWN CHOOSING! 

- Karen