Sunday Stamper - Week 319 - Bits & Pieces

Goooodly Morning Stampers and a very happy Sunday to you all!  Thank you for all your great frosty and festive entries for last weeks challenge.  The theme this week is one to help you!  Oh yesh, the theme is BITS & PIECES so you can interpret the challenge how you like: you could grab all those bits and pieces that you have laying about and pop them onto your creation, you might have stamped some images and not got around to using them...    the choice, it be yours!  To join in with the challenge is simples: make a little something, it can be anything you fancy.  Add in the theme AND some stamping *this is THE important bit guys, please remember your rubberstamps!*  and then hop back here, leave me a comment with a link to the place you are showing your entry and I can come see you.   If you haven't got a blog, you can join in via Facebook (just tag me name) or by emailing a small res.pic to me.  The challenge will remain open until 21:00 Saturday 9th August 2014.

 
Ok, so not only am I helping you tidy up your crafty spaces, I am also admitting that my Room of Stash has kind of, well, sort of... ok, it is reallly getting messy again!  I tend to get a load of stuff out to use on projects and when I don't use them, I bung them all onto a shelf above my desk where they lay around gathering dust and cobwebs and eventually I say "enough!" and spend several hours sorting them and putting them away.  I even have a box for left over diecuts that I haven't used... just the same as a box of offcuts of ribbons and lace... I mean, you never know when you will need that 1" piece of lace do you?

I started my tag by inking it with Antique Linen, Frayed Burlap, Vintage Photo and edging with Walnut Stain Distress Inks.  Stamping with Potting Soil Archival, I stamped the large birds and then using Jet Black I stamped the smaller birds (they are up a-top under the ribbon) and I added some faded script stamping with Antique Linen but that doesn't show up at all now!   My fave diamonds are making another appearance, well they were on me desk from my Compendium tag the other day so why not indeedily?

Now, I have had a pot of Ranger Frosted Crystal Antiquities embossing powder on me desk for a yonk and a half and I was sitting there, looking at my inked tag and I thought "I wonder if...."   So I tried it and... oh yesh, I likes.   SO what did I wonder?  Well, there be a technique of Tim's, called Rusted Enamel, where you ink all over cardstock, sprinkle clear embossing powder over the top, flick the back of the card and then ink right over the embossy bits... so I decided to dry my tag completely as I had used different inks and didn't want the powder to stick all wonky like and then I inked right back over the top using more Antique Linen, this enriched the original colours to my delight too!  I then sprinkled the Antiquities powders over the top, flicked the back of the tag so get rid of some of the powders and then embossed them... wow, I love it!  This tag is so tactile now!  If you have some of these powders... try it! Let me know what you thinks!  Because I am no David Bailey, my photo's aren't really showing what the technique looks like IRL.. I will try and do another one and get better pics (I might even see if I can borrow Grim's swizzy camera *or better still, get him to photo it for me!*)   Once I had my background sorted, I started assembling the bits and pieces I had collected together... I used my Distress Spritzer and a Walnut Stain Marker to dirty up the ribbon roses as they were really clean and stood out far too much for my liking.

I really had a lot of fun putting this tag together and I wish I could say that my desk is looking a little tidier but no, it isn't... nor is the shelf above it... or, for that matter, is the floor any more visible than it was before.  Actually I thinks I may needs to make several hundred more tags like this to get rid of all those little bits I can't bear to either throw away or indeedily, put back where I got them from!   Today we are mostly going to be sitting watching the British Touring Cars, it is sooo long since they were last on... and we were on holibobs so we only saw the highlights of the races... I have missed shouting... GO PLATO!   Thanks for looking, have a great day! TTFN

Hels x