Hi everyone, I hope your summer is off to a great start! We are getting ready to celebrate our Independence Day here in the United States, and Yvonne has created some extra special stamps for this summer's release perfect for your patriotic themed projects. Here are a few I plan to feature in today's post:
I created a mixed media tag for today's project to use these awesome stamps. I love this Americana theme and wanted to experiment with some grunge techniques that I thought might work well on a larger canvas. Sure enough they turned out great, and I can't wait to apply them to a larger surface!
I used my 3x5 GelliArts® plate to create the background of the tag. Then used a Ranger Ink, Archival Black ink pad and The Grunge Numbers, and Military Alphabet stamp to add some character to the background. The negative spaces left from the mono-printing seemed bright from the manila tag, so I used a Tea Dye Distress ink pad from Tim Holtz, and Ranger to distress the acrylic ink and add an aged look to the surface. To finish off the edges, I darkened them with the black Archival ink. Now it was time to make my embellishments.
I used a Large Sizzix Star Die to cut out starts from Shrink Plastic Film, and punched a hole with my the large side of my Crop-A-Dile to make my stars into charms later. I stamped The Pledge stamp with Archival Ink onto the plastic. When you heat the shrink plastic with a heat gun it makes the cutest embellishments. After the plastic cooled, I painted the backs with white acrylic paint so the words would pop against my dark background of my tag. Two of my stars were threaded through the twine at the top of the tag, and the third is glued to the tag. To make them appear to float, I added a glob of hot glue to the tag, allowing it to slightly cool, then gently tapped the star on one side of the glue so that the star is only adhered at an angle.
Next, I stamped my sentiment onto vellum, and embossed it with thick white embossing powder. To create a vintage look, I ripped the edges and distressed the back of the vellum with the same Tea Dye ink. I used the Military Alphabet stamp on the red clothes pin so that it wasn't so "clean", then finished off the tag with some random embellishments from the bucket on my desk.
Here is a quick video showing my process
Here is the finished tag!
This was a quick little project that would make a great home décor project if you chose to repeat this process on a canvas instead of a tag. It would also make a great design for a patriotic themed party invitation, or masculine themed military card!
Thanks for hanging out with me today! I hope you have had a great time. If you have these stamps and decide to follow along, share with us how you are using them in social media with the #YBArtFun.
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