Stamping for Texture

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here with some textured tags for you today.

It won't have escaped your notice that I'm pretty obsessed with the new Flourish Background stamp.  I've used it on journalling pages and jars already, and now I've been experimenting with using it to create texture in different ways, and here are two of the tags which arrived as a result.

There's so much gilding and shimmer going on that it was hard to get a photo of them together that does them both justice at the same time - either one was in shadow, or the other was catching too much light - hopefully you'll get the idea from the close-ups as we go!

The texture on the blue/gold tag was created with gesso.  I applied a generous coating of heavy gesso to the stamp using Cut'n'Dry foam and pressed it down firmly onto the tag.  As well as the relief stamping of the flourish itself, you get lots of additional textural interest as you peel the rubber away (like when you press two gesso'd or painted tags together and peel them apart) - lots of lovely organic ripple patterns.

Then I spritzed away with a combination of Distress Sprays and Perfect Pearl Mists and a few other sparkly sprays.

The colours settled nicely around the flourish textures, but I wanted to highlight them further so I used gilding waxes to zhuzh them up a little.

I love the golden gleam in the sunlight.

The texture on the coppery green tag has a slightly chunkier look.  I put a layer of texture paste onto the tag and pressed the Flourish Background onto it, just as I did with the gesso - though I don't seem to have a picture of this one "naked".  The texture paste obviously gets you a lot more dimensional bang for your buck!

I started with Dabbers and Distress Paints, including metallics, to get a good covering over the paste, and then added some spritzes of shimmer sprays.

Since I was leaning more to the greens than the blues on this tag, I then found myself reaching for coppery gilding waxes to highlight the textures.

Having created these two backgrounds, I really didn't want to cover them up very much!  I don't often reach for flowers - though for some reason I do have a whole box of paper flowers in my stash! - but that seemed to be the way to go with these tags.

They started out fairly innocuously in various colours... so I got busy with the Distress Sprays again.  I wanted them to look as if they were emerging out of the tags, so I spritzed them to co-ordinate with the respective colour palettes.

The blue-green ones got a spritz of Tarnished Brass to give a hint of a metallic look to fit with the gilded texture.

The flowers for the coppery green tag went through the same process with slightly different colours, and their metallic spray was the Antique Bronze - a warmer shade.

I liked the gilded look, so I emphasised the metallic shimmer even more by adding some gold embossing powder to the edges of the rose flower petals, large and small.  And I used copper embossing powder to add the extra gilding to the tips of the green petals.

It may have been slightly crazy to reach for the kraft card to create my word panels... kraft with all that gilding?!  But I really like the contrast.

The "with thanks" wording comes from Katy Leitch's Leaves set, and it's embossed in gold for one tag and in copper for the other.

It needed a bit more of the rustic earthiness to balance the shimmer, so I mounted the tags onto kraft card with padded tape, edging everything with Archival ink to give little more definition.

And some simple twine at the top completes the look - continuing the contrast between baroque gilded texture and rustic earthiness.

So, I hope you like them - a more gilded look than normal for me.  I think I've been influenced by Dee's fabulous work here!  And with all those flowers these would fit right in to the Flora and Fauna challenge theme here this month.  I hope you'll come and join in.  Remember, we do have to see some stamping, but it doesn't have to be with Artistic Stamper stamps (though if you do use them you get a double entry into the prize draw!!).  Hope to see you there.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I'll see you soon.

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper stamps: Flourish Background, Leaves
Distress Spray Stains - Faded Jeans, Peeled Paint, Evergreen Bough, Peacock Feathers, Tarnished Brass, Antique Bronze
Distress Paints - Antique Bronze, Peeled Paint, Tarnished Brass, Evergreen Bough
Ranger Paint Dabbers - Copper, Bottle
Perfect Pearls Mists - Blue Smoke, Patina Green, Sour Apple, Heirloom Gold, Perfect Copper, Mint, Patina Blue
Gilding Wax - could use Crafty Notions Gleam or Cosmic Shimmer in various colours
Embossing Powders - Rich Gold, Copper
Texture Paste - PaperArtsy Grunge Paste or Cosmic Shimmer paste should both work
Manila Tags
Kraft Card
Inkssentials Cut'n'Dry Foam
From my stash - paper flowers, twine, gesso