Friday 16 March 2012

Tims March Tag

The theme over on Tim's blog this month is mosaics.  In order to keep my British theme I decided my mosaics would take the form of Union Flags in a bunting:


For this tag I have used:  Artemio London Stamps (the crown, Tower Bridge and the Union flag), Creative Journey London Stamp (the Police Box).  The inks I have used are:  Black and Crimson archival inks, Stonewashed Adirondack, Walnut Stain and Frayed Burlap distress inks along with Barn Door and Broken China stains for the ribbons.  The tag is sprayed with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls, the background image is actually a Couture Creations embossing folder of a World Map which I inked with Broken China and used as a stamp.  The flags are finished off with Judikins White embossing powder and glossy accents and then I finished the crown with bling and the bunting is held up with hemp (the expensive one no less!).  The tag is laid out on my dining room tablecloth which explains the leaning Big Ben next to it!

Took me an age to get the flags right - here are some disasters along the way:

The first one shows that Tim is right and other double sided tapes shrink with the heat!, the second is how all of my flags actually turned out until I realised that I could peel off the top layer of all the card pieces to get it looking better (as they are covered over in glossy accents it doesnt matter that they have been peeled down a layer), the third flag is a proper mosaic (using tiny pieces of cut up card) again this time I filled in the gaps with glitter but I still preferred the finish of the embossing powder so I redid the tag with larger pieces of mosaic bits which looked far better but then I didn't like the way I had cut the middle section into five so then I had to make another three flags which were the ones that have ended up on the finished version - took me hours this!  still they were happy hours.....

Thanks for looking - Relaxed from Solihull

8 comments:

Anna said...

I know what you mean about "happy" hours! I spent several of them last night putting together my card and getting it to look like I envisioned it...well SORT OF anyway.
I've decided that mosaics are WAY to fussy for me to do very often.
Enjoyed your card and your post!

Sherry said...

I Love how your flags turned out, well worth all the work you put into them. I also spent hours working on my mosaics until I got them just the way I wanted them, and enjoyed every "happy hour" of it.

Missus Wookie said...

Now see - I'd look at mosaic and figure fiddly but you actually make it sound relaxing. I'll have to read T!M's blog to get the original but I'm glad you had those happy hours crafting and are feeling better.

Winnie said...

Wow! I love your mosaics. I didn't realize at first they were mosaics they look so precise! Awesome. Love your British them tag.

Anonymous said...

Test comment

Anonymous said...

I was looking at your 'mosaic' tag and I just couldn't see it. And then I 'got it' when I saw your outtakes. WOW, you really showed some dedication to getting the job done right. You've done a fun creative take on this technique. So cool.

PS. you can remove my 'test comment'. I didn't want to go thru the trouble of typing a comment only to have blogger reject all my WV attempts. Thank you for turning it off. :)

Gez Butterworth said...

Wow! Stunning tag Nicola. Enjoy.xx

El rincon de vanessa said...

Te a quedado muy bonito y original !!! me encanta...