R is for Rust, S is for Soulful, T is for Texture

  I've been in love with rust, brown, camel, and turquoise colors this week and that is why these next 3 tags match. To me the earthy colors are reminiscent of the southwest where I live.

 In this first tag I gathered rusted fabric and used a couple of rusting embossing powders (Ranger Embossing antiquities rust and Tim Holtz Distress vintage photo powders) and while I love the look of the antiquities rust it didn't really look like real rust plus it was kinda shiny. The Tim Holtz one starts out looking shiny but the instructions tell you to lightly sand or rub into the embossed color until it looks more matte which worked better. So I used that for the eyelet and letter. Then I found these gorgeous looking brads called Vintage accents by Creative Charms at a local craft store and added those along with some scrap painted turquoise paper and painted ribbon. At the bottom I added some stripes of turquoise paint. The words were letters individually stamped in black onto a distressed brown background.

When I look at this wonderful image of a gypsy from Altered Pages she looks so soulful and dreamy. She doesn't need anything added to her because she's perfect just the way she is. This tag was going to be about stitching so the background is made up of various scraps of paper in similar colors stitched onto a background and then cut to fit the tag. I did distress the tag and in some areas of the paper to bring out their textures. The S is an old eyelet I had and I used Stazon brown and black inks to cover up the shiny silver. The words were written with a black micron pen.

 Here's another challenging tag that I thought would be quick and easy to do but ended up taking too much time. Just because the tag is small doesn't make it easier to do because you still have to think about composition, shapes and colors in a very limited space. Plus I fuss way too much and get nowhere sometimes! So there's a medley of textures in this one; painted corrigated cardboard, some kind of grass cloth, painted cheesecloth, and snakeskin textured paper. The "T" was covered with a brown leather like paper and the words were embossed on metal and then colored with Stazon brown and black inks. The eyelet sprocket was painted with the same craft paints I used for the cardboard; black, brown iron oxide (Ceramcoat), Laguna blue (Ceramcoat), and golden brown (Plaid).