Building up my tag stash & using up some stuff

Hi everyone. I have been busy lately with tag making. I wanted to build up my stash of finished tags to put into junk journals still in the process of being created. I also wanted to use up "stuff"...designer paper, scraps of coffee dyed paper, bits of lace, and ephemera rather than having it continue to accumulate as clutter. And finally, I love making tags and will look for any excuse to play :) I've had a Recollections paper pad called Vintage Country in my stash for ages but I've rarely used any of it. Some of the papers looks collaged, some look like burlap, and some actually are burlap adhered to a paper backing. I decided to chop up that last one to create some vintage tags based on a 2.5 x 5 inch manila tag I use as a template.

All of the tags were inked around with Coffee Archival Ink and three were given hole reinforcements punched out of kraft cardstock. For five of these six tags, I layered up scraps of coffee dyed papers including book text, plain paper which I stamped, or music paper. I always have a bag of different sizes of  sewn and inked folded music strips on hand so I used them as the decoration for the bottom of four of these.

Embellishments such as part of a doily, an embossed resist chipboard heart, or scraps of Jenny Bowlin stickers (the row of stars) were added to the design. Vintage buttons and little pops of black were also included to add contrast to the fairly monochromatic tags.

Some of the Tim Holtz Idea-ology Paper Dolls became the focals of the tags. These were inked around with Black Big Brush Pen to help them stand out against the background and some were popped up on foam tape for added dimension. Single words from Idea-ology ChitChat or Big Chat stickers were added to a few tags to emphasize a particular detail or feeling. In the case of the tag above, the word also gave the trio a place to stand, grounding them.

Cheesecloth also played a role in the design of a couple of these tags. This particular cheesecloth was coffee dyed which gives it a lovely aged look. It adds such lovely texture on top of the burlap base.I especially like how the coffee colour and loose weave contrast with the white lace tucked under the book paper..

The sixth tag in this set is slightly different than the other five. It features a butterfly fussy cut from a collage sheet and glittered up on the body using Black Diamond Stickles. The butterfly was popped up with foam tape and layered over a small tag cut from one of the collaged backgrounds in the same paper pad. Burlap and lace embellish the bottom edge. The tag toppers on all six tags are either woven trims, bits of lace, or cheesecloth. All three keep that vintage rustic feeling going.

Thanks for visiting today. All my little paper doll friends and I appreciate that. Stay tuned later this weekend when I will do a post about some of the smaller tags I created. I had such fun...and made such a mess :)

Life is good; so is art.

Bonnie