Mixed Media Tags and Gift Bags with Heather Thompson

I wanted to do something nice for the staff that I work with. We have a tight group on our weekend and I trust when the going gets tough, this crew will pound through it and get the job done. I picked up a variety of goodies, goggles, A nice Head band from Junk Headbands. Some anti-fog lens cleaners, some sweets, and of course I made a tag for each one of them.

Because I made 9 of these, and I wanted to get them done faster than I would have, I used simple spray to add the colour to each of them. I started out with a variety of tags from the Tag Sets in the store. I will never run out of tags!

I made a video of the creative process.

I love doing backgrounds, and Nicolle has some great new stencils in the store, these tags are very heavy stencilled. There was a lot of dry time on these. Along with a heat gun that went up in smoke. Thank goodness I had a spare, these would have taken forever to dry with out it. The nice thing is with home schooling along with working still. I had plenty of reasons to step aside and let the drying happen naturally.

I used various mediums with the stencils, I used everything from Crackle paste, to modelling paste and I finished some off with sand paste.

After the various background stencils, I used background pieces: mesh distress pieces, distress checkered, grunge heart corner to name a few. This adds to the background texture of the tags.

I moved right on to the focal points, I love assemblage. It is so relaxing to just start to build up the tags. I knew I wanted to use the Word Bulbs, I have been sitting on them for a while and thought these tags would be great to use them on.

Using various moulds and resin pieces for the focal points, I fill in the gaps with medium gears and the metal pieces from my stash.

Once the big pieces are dried, I fill in all the smaller holes with beads and mini art stones. After a liberal coat of white paint. I picked out some bright colours in sprays and add a layer or two until I get the vibrancy I am looking for.

I topped them all off with some waxes.