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

Crazy Cat Canvas with Karen Bearse

Today I have a super simple cat canvas tutorial. I have this Siamese cat, Arwen and wanted to create a photo canvas of our cranky little family member who is sometimes sweet. It fits perfectly with our Anything Goes challenge so come join us and you could win!

The end result looks much harder but trust me super simple! In my quest to use from my stash I had a 6x12” canvas so I fit my project to that size.

Playing with Southern Ridge stencils was a good place to start. Simply put your stencil down and with a spatula scrape product through. Light molding paste, and Distress Grit-paste. I choose a few different stencils making sure to add some paste on to the sides of the canvas. Wash your stencils immediately or set in water until ready to clean. I just use an old tooth brush to get the wet paste off. Set your canvas aside to dry.

Once the paste was dry I spritzed with my favourite colour mists. I am stuck on blues and greens so I went with that. Choose a few colours that if they mix they create a 3rd colour. This will prevent you from making mud. Also choose colours that will make your pictures pop.

Once the mist was dry I added in Glimmer Glam using a paint brush. This has good coverage and glitter as an added bonus. This was used to paint the sides of the canvas and blend areas where more colour or a pop of glitter was needed. You can also use acrylic paint if you prefer, or spritz your mist on a palette and paint on with a brush. Water will re-activate the mist so be aware of that when adding to your canvas.

For the kitty cats I wanted them to really stand out so I used a black Glimmer Glam (you can also use acrylic paint) to paint the chippies adding different products to each. Running kitty got mica flakes and micro beads, sitting kitty got fire-opal flakes and crouching kitty got a mix of different emboss powders. Glam is sticky and products adhere to it easily but just to be sure, once it is dry, add a thin coat of decoupage glue.

Use whatever you have on hand. A few ideas are seed beads, glitter glass, or leave your kitties with paint and highlight with a metallic colour like copper.

You have a choice now. Either leave the remaining chippies natural or do a quick and simple stain with distress. I decided to colour the fish & title with distress stain & cover with a layer of clear emboss powder as I wanted it to shine. Again I wanted the fish to really pop so I used a colour that would stand out against my background. Wrapping wire around the tail and attaching it hanging from the canvas added a nice element. You can also just use thread or twine. I did the same colouring for the title “Crazy” and distressed the edges with paint.

The rest was just assembly. Move the chippies around until you find a good placement for them and then adhere. As a final touch distress the edges of your canvas with paint or archival ink. I hope this tutorial helps you to make a fun photo canvas!

Southern Ridge Trading Company Chippies Used:

- 6 Cats

- Cat Tags #2

- Crazy Word

Southern Ridge Trading Company Stencils Used:

- Bubble Wrap

- Rain Drop

- Fish Net

Other Supplies Used:

- Tattered Angels: Glimmer Mist- Bahama Blue, Aquamarine, Jazz Blue,

Chalkboard- Inchworm

Glimmer Glam- Mermaid, Caspian Sea, Organic Garden, Stiletto

- Ranger Ink: Distress Paint- Black Soot, Mustard Seed, Foss. Amber,

Distress Stain – Wilted Violet, Abandoned Coral,

Distress Grit-Paste, Glossy Accents, UTEE

- Golden- Light Molding Paste

- Archival Ink- Jet Black

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

Fabulous Flower Art Journal Page with Karen Bearse

I hope you are enjoying your summer! I felt inspired today to document a flower from my garden. This photo was taken using the Hipstamatic app on my Iphone. I like the artsy quality of the photo with the brick and shabby look.

Here is my finished art journal page. I am in the process of making a book using all kinds of different substrates and The Cinch to bind it together when I am finished. This gives me the freedom to design as I go and choose how it will come together at the end.

I started with the back of a square printed envelope by spritzing multiple colours of glimmer mist and letting them run together a bit. This created a nice shimmery background. As this is an envelope and I want to be able to open the other side adding a piece of cardstock with washi tape on the left side, gives a place to punch The Cinch holes but leaves the envelope free.

Did you know that Southern Ridge Trading Co. now has stencils? Let’s play with one! A fun product to use with stencils is glass bead gel. It dries like a clear glue with lots of small glass beads. You can either colour after it dries or before. I decided I wanted to tint the gel with one of the glimmer mist colours I used in my background- Black Cherry. Mix a few spritzes of colour in with the gel using a spatula & spread it across the stencil. The trick to this, is not to over work the gel or it slides under the stencil and the image is less crisp. You can see in my final piece the upper left corner is nice and defined but the upper right corner is a bit sloppy. This happened because I scraped my spatula over the same spot a few times. You really want to just scrape the gel across the stencil once. Note that in this photo the gel looks pink but it dries to a transparent black cherry colour. Make sure you clean your stencil immediately with warm water. Set page aside to dry.

For my chippie leaves “Polka Dot Swirls’ I wanted the colours to be bright and stand out against the darker background. I started by heat embossing in white. That gave me a slick shiny base which is perfect for alcohol inks.

Using 2 separate dabs of colour on my dauber allowed me to vary the colours on the chippies. Simply tap, tap the colour onto the embossed piece. Once the 2 green colours were on, a touch of copper was added in a few spots to give it a bit of metallic grungy look.

For my word chip dabbing on distress paint was a quick easy way to put down colour. I painted the whole word in Bundled Sage to create a bit of a bright background and once dry added Mermaid Lagoon and Lucky Clover again in different spots so I got the multi-colour look. A trick to get your embellies to pop off the page is to use a warm background & cool coloured embellishments. My background colours of purples, pinks and orange are warm colours and the chippies are greens and blues which are cool.

Once my page was assembled and the chipboard glued down using glossy accents, it was time to add some doodling. Using a white paint pen simply outline a few of the stencil shapes and add random dots around the chippies. This helps to brighten the page and adds some interest.

Can you see the little beads in the bead gel? I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and take a look at the new stencils. Don’t forget to join our monthly challenge & you can win the prize! Have an inky fun day!

Southern Ridge Chipboard Supplies:

- Word Mix #1

- Polka Dot Swirls

- Rain Drop Stencil

Other Supplies:

- Tattered Angels: Fully Purple (Glimmer Mist), Black Cherry (Glimmer Mist) and Valencia (Chalkboard mist)

- Tim Holtz Distress Paint by Ranger: Bundled Sage, Mermaid Lagoon and Lucky Clover

- Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks by Ranger: Pesto, Citrus and Copper

- Ranger Ink: Glossy Accents and Emboss It Dabber

- Recollections: Printed Envelope and Washi Tape

- Posca White Paint marker .7mm

- Liquitex Bead Gel

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