Choose To Shine – Mixed Media Tag

Hi hi hi or maybe that should be ho ho ho!  It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and so with that in mind I have a lovely shiny pink and gold tag to share with you today.  This is my first Design Team project for a new challenge blog that is all about small things, all things miniature in fact, and it is called Marvellous Mini Masterpieces!  Here comes my tag…

 

The tag is surrounded by some of my little crocheted flowers which were just the right colour to match the tag! (I found them in a drawer when I was looking for ribbon!)   I joined this team because sometimes I struggle with lack of space so making mini things would be a bit of a challenge for me!  You know when people talk about opening a large art journal and then are faced with the daunting task of breaking a blank page, especially a large blank page?  Well I don’t have that problem, in fact I always feel like I don’t have enough space, so my art journals are BIG and when I make cards I make BIG cards, and I always feel like I need the additional real estate.  My problem is that I struggle to make small things, so I joined this team in the hope that it will make me better at working on a smaller canvas. I have been trying to do better with this and in fact, have recently made some smaller things, including my new favourite art journal that I made from watercolour paper, and these mini canvases that I made for another Design Team.

Anyway, let’s get on with the show and tell!  There are two challenges per month and two teams, I am on the B team so my challenge starts today on the 15th of the month.  This month for the first challenge I had to make a tag inspired by this mood board.

I love all the pinks and purples in this tag, but when I came to make the tag my brain went in another direction and I ended up focusing more on the gold elements in the mood board.  Here’s a few step by step photos of how it came together.

I pulled out a few bits and pieces that I might want to use, including some stencils, some book paper and some paper scraps and some corrugated cardboard from a Felix cat food box (so handy!)

Using a Sizzix tag die, I cut the tag from an old amazon box.

I started playing around with some possible placement of the elements I wanted to use on the tag.  I also painted the tag and the corrugated cardboard with gold paint.

This stencil reminds me of the paper fans from the mood board, so I used it with some icing paste to cover my tag background.

Here’s how it’s looking so far now that we have all the gold in place.

That’s the end of the step by step, I added a few more elements including these little bits of gold mesh behind to top and bottom pictures.  I wish I knew where it came from as I would like to get some more but it’s really old and been in my stash for a long time.  I added some metallic pink paint splatters and edged the tag with it too, then used some faux suede cord to my tag so it could be hung up or attached to a gift perhaps.

Here’s another look in the daylight.  The choose to shine sticker is one of the Tim Holtz small talk stickers and seemed appropriate with all the shine going on in the tag!

 

I hope you will give this new challenge a try, especially if you love making tiny things.  You can find the challenge in the Facebook Group.  The challenge is just for fun so have some fun making marvellous mini masterpieces!  As always, thanks for reading.  Let me know what you think in the comments 🙂

 

Challenges entered

Creative Artiste Challenge #67 – anything goes
Art Daily Cafe – December Challenge – Expectations of a Holiday, Magic, Miracles