Awesome takes practice ~ inspired by a Vera Lane Studio image

Hi everyone! For my last project as a guest designer for Vera Lane Studio, I created a #10 size tag featuring one of the 7 images from the new set called The Thumbs. These characters are simple and sweet, fun to colour and ideal for paper piecing.

I coloured the skin and hair of Pigtails with Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils. She was fussy cut leaving a narrow white border, matted with black, and fussy cut again leaving a narrow black border. Her dress was printed a second time onto a mop-up atc sized paper covered with Lindy's Starburst sprays. This was fussy cut, shaded with coloured pencil, and adhered over the original image. Three small black jewels were used to indicate the dress buttons. Pigtails was then popped up on foam tape, ready for the background to magically appear.

The background started as a second pull from a gel plate which had used acrylic paints and TCW Mayan Calendar stencil to achieve the design. The page was mostly white with pink patterning. Extra pattern and texture was added with Viva Las Vegas Row of Stars stamp plus TH splatter dots with Jet Black Archival, Stampotique Dotted Squares stamp applied with Magenta Hue Archival Ink, and Crafty Individuals script stamp using Tiger Lily Archival Ink. Three patterns of washi tape plus black cardstock cut into a strip and punched in a scallop border were added. The edge of the tag was edged with Magenta Hue Archival Ink, Black Big Brush pen, and given a doodled border.

The wording was printed on white cardstock, cut into individual words, and matted with black. Foam tape was used to adhere the words to the tag. A black button from Gram's stash was threaded and glued to the left side of the bottom washi strips and the entire tag was matted with black cardstock to frame and finish it.

Thanks for joining Pigtails and me today. Be sure to pop by the Vera Lane Studio Etsy shop to check out the rest of The Thumbs set as well as the multitude of fabulous images available. There is a ton of inspiration there as well as on the Vera Lane Studio Facebook group. I have had the most delightful time guest designing for the month of February. Thanks again to Janet and the amazing VLS design team.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie