Stash Shopping - 6 Mixed Media Tags

 So, I did a thing… before I sent some crafty stuff to creative friends (in an effort to declutter).  I decided to create and include a little thank you card which devolved into a mixed media tag frenzy for me. I’ve been coming across a lot of very old stuff in my cleaning efforts, like…

 Old Tuesday Morning finds (from my Tuesday morning Shopping binges… you know…”wow, can’t believe these prices!”, “I’m sure I could find a use for that!”, cheap acrylic and mixed media mediums, or oh, my, retired Tim Holtz stuff!)

Or stuff picked up in mystery boxes from craft stores,

Or from mixed media craft subscription boxes!

 All resulting in a huge compelling urge to throw away, give away or use ASAP, this old stuff!

(And hey… got to make room for some new stuff!)

So, I started by getting out 6 tags, of which I have a ton of, and then proceeded to pull out red and dark green acrylic paints, white gesso, Vicki Boutin printed tissue paper, clear acetate images, clear sticky lace strips, white music paper, preprinted tags, and these 4x6 preprinted black and white cards which looked like seed packets with sentiments on them. Here’s a remnant of the 4x6 cards…

 So, I started by loosely painting and drying parts of the tag. I added white gesso covering over parts of the paint. I then took gel medium and added the Vick Boutin crosshatch and leaf stems tissue, and strips of music paper in the corner spots. I then added clear acetate Kaisercraft lace strips.

Next, I decided to watercolor the flower parts of the preprinted seed papers, thinking I could fussy cut them out and have them be the focal point of the tags. I used watercolor Graphite and Prismacolor watercolor pens to lightly add green and red colors to the flowers. After fussy cutting the flowers and some of the sentiments out, I then started arranging the flowers, picking out the right background for each flower. Then I played some more with each tag, adding randomly more clear acetate images, random Kraft sentiments I had on hand, chipboards, diecuts or stamping and adding more sentiments in spots. I added white and black spatters as needed. Then I added white acrylic paint and pen to little preprinted garden focused tags I thought could be added at the top… his copacetic was that? Here’s the results… each having a different feel and look! 

 

Here’s a more detailed look at these messy, busy, but hopefully fun to look at tags!

So, it felt great to be creative and artsy again… must admit my skills have eroded from lack of use. It also felt good using up bits and pieces of stuff from my stash. I ended up throwing out old dried up mixed media mediums, telling me I have to do another purge of paints, pastes and acylic mediums! 

What do you think… how’d they turn out, do you like these, have a fav? Interested in your thoughts! Thanks for stopping by!