Sunday 22 September 2013

Autumn tag

My Autumn tag (one of the large tags)
 
I decided to create an autumn tag as it's feeling decidedly autumnal now, though we're yet to get the gorgeous autumnal colours on the leaves here!  This one's for our CC101 Facebook group challenge.  Looking forward to Tim's follow-up online class that starts the beginning of October - CC102 (only available if you've already taken 101).  (details here)

The group seems to have been quite inspired this month by Dyan Reaveley's technique, Patchwork background so here's my take on it (including lots of Tim's goodies).

It might be easy, but I'm not very good at 'taking a line for a walk' (see video) - I just got too many ultra small segments, so I ended up drawing a few curved lines on a large tag.  I still had over 60 sections! As I had decided not to doodle in the segments, I made a photocopy which I cut up to mask off the various sections.

In each section, I used paint as the background, & then over-stamped with distress in the same or matching colour.
Stamping the first colour


[Mustard Seed paint & ink / Rusty Hinge paint, Spiced Marmalade ink / Purple Twilight paint (Adirondack)  Seedless Preserves ink / Forest Moss paint, Shabby Shutters ink / Vintage Photo paint & ink / Frayed Burlap paint, Pumice Stone ink]

Most of the stamping detail isn't that obvious, unless you look very closely!  I die cut a mask sheet with Tattered Leaves, & masked the leaves, went round each leaf with black permanent marker (and the lines inside), then painted most of the rest of the tag in black (as Dyan's technique).  But I wasn't too happy about the result - the black was just too black & I tried to add other colours around it, but it just looked a mess!  So firstly, as the top left was looking decidedly wrong and empty, I cut the bottom off the tag & cut out both the (partial) leaves.

And here's where I love working with acrylic paint!  I re-masked the leaves and covered the whole 'mess' with the Purple Twilight paint which covered the black perfectly - so much better, and much more autumnal!

To make the leaves 'pop', I heat embossed them with a clear glitter.  And finally I used a couple of Tim's new stencils to add a few areas of 'bubbles' (vintage photo) & 'honeycomb' (rusty hinge) (as this was dabbed through with a blending tool (as Tim's technique for his September tag), it just adds subtle layers).

Detail of the 'patchwork' and some of the stencilling


With just a few finishing touches - tiny copper dots around the leaves (gel pen), three autumn quotes, and an edging of antiqued bronze stain & vintage photo ink.  And attached the 'spare' leaves at the top, and added stained & stencilled ribbon (as in Tim's September tag) - it was done!  

[the quotes I used were:
'the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves' - Jane Austen - Persuasion; 'AUTUMN is a second spring when every LEAF is a flower' - Albert Camus; 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness' - John Keats - Ode to Autumn']

Back soon!  (fingers crossed!)

Kay