Bird Cage Tag

Hello!  I can’t believe it’s March already and we’re on to the 3rd Tim tag of 2016.  What a beautiful tag Tim made with those vibrant butterflies – love it!  Those colors remind me of how spring looks with colorful flower beds full of annuals.

12 tags of 2016 – march…

This month I had to make do with what supplies I had on hand.  After two other attempts, here’s my version:

I had a really tough time with this challenge because I’ve had the longest creative dry spell ever,  and I’m not that great with blending colors to begin with, especially vibrant colors.  I had to use whatever gelatos I had and they certainly aren’t as colorful as the distress crayon colors in Tim’s tag.  I ended up using 3 colors, watermelon, banana and snow cone.  I had a mixed media die set in my stash, but the dies/patterns are smaller so it’s hard to make much of an impact with the colors.

I did follow Tim’s tutorial, but started with the mixed media tags since I knew I’d have a problem with the colors.  For my background, I just used a piece of paper from the scrap pile…all 3 times.  Two versions later and still with ugly colors, I didn’t want to just give up, so I decided to do the dimensional die cut and see how that went.  Even that was a problem with my die choices, so I finally decided to try the bird cage with bird die.  The size of the tag overlapped into the bird a little bit, but I knew I could cover that up with the bird.  I placed the cut outline and bird cage on one of my gelato-colored discards, and the full bird cage was too much, so I cut it down.   Later on I added 3 aqua rhinestones for some bling.

 I used Gathered Twigs, Brushed Corduroy and Walnut Stain distress ink on the cardboard pieces.  I didn’t have a Distress Spray Stain that I could use, so I mixed some Perfect Pearls Perfect Bronze with water and flicked it on with my paint brush.  I had a dark brown color mist spray bottle, which was clogged, so I just used the sprayer end and flicked that color on as well.  I added some of Picket Fence distress paint and then gold foil to finish up.   I love the foil!

I liked how these turned out, which gave me the courage (LOL!) to try the colored pieces again.  I chose a darker piece of paper for my background this time around because my previous choices were too light.

After appling gesso and using my heat tool to dry it, I started working on the colors.  I blended it all with my fingers, but applied more after without blending to try and make it  more vibrant.  I did this 2 or 3 more times after taking the pic, because it just wasn’t as bright as I wanted, but I needed to move on.

 

When I attached everything together, I did try to make the bird cage bow out a little bit to add dimension.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I trimmed down the bird cage, I needed something to cover up the half holes on either side.  I had some flowers in my stash, so I inked the paper ones with Gathered Twigs and painted on some Glossy Accents before dipping them in my jar of Clear Rock Candy distress glitter, just to add some sparkle.  For the large flower, I added a small orange felt flower on top, then a pink pearl accent.  I thought the big flower was fine for one side, but too big for both.  I used the same kind of flowers, but cut them down and basically did the same technique, but made each one a little bit different.

Next, I made my bow.  The crinkle ribbon and Paula bow was a new discovery for me last month, and I think it’s going to be a long love affair.  Coloring my ribbon with the gelatos was challenging – I applied my colors to my craft mat, spritzed with water and started coloring.  The yellow color really took over, so after drying the ribbon, I just applied the other colors one at a time…about 3 more attempts.  Even then the other colors weren’t really showing up, so after drying and tying onto my tag, I applied more of the watermelon and snow cone gelatos to my craft mat, spritzed with water, and used a paint brush to paint color directly onto the bow.  I liked it much better after that.

I used Small Talk stickers and word bands to finish it off.  Here’s more pics of my tag. Sorry for the long post – thanks for stopping by and please feel free to leave comments.

I would also like to enter this into the following challenges:

http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/mondaychallenge/?p=4150 (Make Your Own Background)

http://blog.emeraldcreek.ca/2016/03/ring-in-spring.html

http://anythingbutcutechallenge.blogspot.com/2016/03/challenge-11-crazy-for-colour.html

http://www.4craftychicks.blogspot.ca/2016/03/challenge-289-7-layers.html (layers:  tag base, patterned paper, mixed media dies, corrugated cardboard bird cage shape, corrugated card board bird cage, bird, small talk stickers, word band, paper flowers, felt flower, glitter, bling)

http://frillyandfunkie.blogspot.com/2016/03/lets-make-it-trio.html (3 flowers)

http://allsortschallenge.blogspot.com/2016/03/week-354-spring-is-in-air.html

http://die-cut-divas.blogspot.com/2016/03/something-spring.html

http://liveandlovecrafts.blogspot.com/2016/03/challenge-45-signs-of-spring.html

 

I