Vintage Look St. Patrick’s Day Tags

We don’t really celebrate St. Patrick’s day at our home in a big way, but just bringing in some green and thinking that spring will eventually come this year, it was fun to participate in a St. Patrick’s themed tag swap!  These little tags made for a swap, were speeded along by using the vintage images offered by Joanna Grant!

Vintage Look St. Patrick Tags

What size tags do you usually make? Do you tend to stick to one size, or do you like to mix it up? By making these tags 3 inches by 4 inches, they could also be used in pocket scrapbooking pages!

Here’s how these were quickly made:

  • After cutting card stock to 3″ x 6″, the corners were rounded, and a pattern was stamped. I chose to use thinned down acrylic paint to give it a little different look than stamping with ink.  
  • Next, Tim Holtz Distress Ink was used to add more green over the entire card, and a bit of brown was added to the edges. 
  • The vintage images were printed out onto Presentation Paper, and torn around the edges and inked around edge before adhering to the card.
  • One tiny embellishment was added — a tiny pearl in the middle of her bonnet.
  • Finally, a bit of ribbon and twine was added to a punched hole. 

That’s it!

I enjoy using technology to speed up creating, but still love to get messy and crafty! By using this kind of on-demand printing for projects, it can allow you to have less physical product on hand — or not!

What kind of technology do you incorporate in your artsy/craftsy ventures?

KS

Art Journaling Basics – Sample Page

While creating the Art Journaling Basics series, it seemed like there was not much time for much art journaling.  Ironic, right?  There are several backgrounds ready to go from the video on creating backgrounds, so I decided to grab one and use one of the vintage images from yesterday’s post.

kristiesloan_20130716_vintage-seaside

Here’s how it this art journal page was created:

  • Applied gesso to a book page
  • Applied a light watercolor wash to page
  • Printed vintage image and did image transfer using a gel medium. You could easily just print it, cut it out and use it as is.
  • Stamped sea shells in the corner of image
  • Spritzed a bit of ink from markers to make specks of color
  • Printed quote; cut out; used matte medium to adhere
  • Used matte medium over image to seal and brushed a bit over the stamped shells
  • Used waterproof, black fine-point pen to do rough, sketchy line under quote sections
  • Randomly dabbed a bit of white on the page

As the vintage image was getting a light layer of matte medium to seal it, I noticed that the first sea shell it touched was beginning to bleed.  I liked the way it softened the edges of the stamped images, and I continued to lightly brush the medium over the other stamped shells.  Then I realized it was causing the ink to look totally different.  You could see more of the red in the brown!  If I had wanted to make sure the water based ink did not begin to bleed with other layers added, I would have needed to use a workable fixative before using any other waterbased products in layering.

Grab your art journal and make a page before the Artful Adventures’ train leaves this station!  Then come over and share it on the Facebook Group page!

Wishing your Artful Adventures!

KS

Art Journaling Basics – Page Starter

In this stop along our way, we are going to look at using an image to add to our page for a jumping off point.  Our mixed media art friend, Joanna Grant, has provided some vintage images for us to use. We thought these bathing beauties would be great to use for a variety of themes – reflection, women, beach….!   Print one or more to use on a page. You may also like to use one of the quotes listed below the photos, or feel free to do whatever you’d like to do!

Simply double click on an image to get the full size. Next, right click on the image to download and print it off to use on your page.

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

“There are no good girls gone wrong – just bad girls found out.”
― Mae West

“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”
― Coco Chanel

“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition”
― Timothy Leary

Joanna has several CD’s of vintage images in her Etsy store, and often offers seasonal images for free on her blog, or her Facebook page:

www.joannabanana.etsy.com
www.facebook.com/JoannaGrantArt
www.joannabananadesignoriginals.blogspot.com

Be sure to share you work with us by linking to the comments, or by coming over to the Facebook Group!

Cheers to YOUR creativity!  — Kristie