Inspire - An Oriental Themed Tag

Hi Everyone,

The lovely crafters over at Anything But A Card have, for Challenge #5, challenged us to incorporate black into our project. This tag fits the remit as black has been included in the stamping, embossing and there's even black ribbon.

The pattern on the paper used to cover this tag has a mix of red, light brown and black which I've overstamped with grasses in even more black.

I've been playing around with embossing powders and glitters, frantage style, again! The paper was leftover from a recent scrapping session and as the pattern was inspired by the Orient, I decided to go with the theme ... it gave me an excuse to use the preloved bamboo and wild grass stamps picked up at a car boot sale ages ago :)

For the topper: the bamboo was stamped out in dark green on hammered white card, inked with Tim's Old Paper ink to take the starkness of the white, and then some of the leaves were just touched here and there with Zig glue to be finished off with gilding flakes. Finally, the topper was edged with a gold leafing pen.

I also had a bash at trying out a technique seen demonstrated by Mel Heaton on TV recently to make the dragonfly embellishment. Basically, you melt UTEE in an aluminium dish, then drizzle it on to a heat-proof craft sheet, heat again and sprinkle a mix of glitters on top, this settles into the UTEE. For this one I used platinum UTEE and mixed in several colours of EP too. Finally, while it's still hot, take an inked up stamp and press it into the mix. Clearly, it needs more practice, but I was pleased with my first attempt :)

Lots of materials used - here is the list: 

Recycled cardboard for base; paper from BoBunny Serenity Collection; Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black; Versafine Olympia Green; Tim Holtz DI, Old Paper; VersaMark Watermark Ink Refill; Stamps: Rubber Stampede Inc, Wild Grass; Posh Presents, Posh Bamboo; DeNami Design, Dragonfly; Krylon Gold Leafing pen; Embossing Powders: Platinum UTEE; Midnight Black; WOW Blueberry Regular & Burgundy Red Regular; Glitters: Wine; Copper; Silver Heliogram; White Iridescent; Snippet of white hammered cardstock; Gilding Flakes: Frosted Leaves & a Zig 2-way glue pen; Charms: coin, key, leaf, butterfly; ribbons: red satin; black organza; burgundy organza; raffia; Tim Holtz Chitchat Verbiages Charla 'inspire' word; red gems

Having used and impressive number of snippets, leftovers, and even recycled cardboard from packaging, I'm popping this over to Di at Pixie's Crafty Workshop too.

Now I'm off to watch the end of Pointless but I'll be in the craft space later ... I'm working on another scrap layout.

I hope you are all well and that you've had as good a day as I have.

Happy crafting,