Envirocraftiness: Messy-Inky Fun Tag Tutorial

Remember back here when I teased you with a tutorial for these sweet tags?

Well here it is!!!

Here's what we're making today:

Place cards!

What you're gonna need:

- 2-3 different colored ink pads

- Tim Holtz splat mat OR wax paper

- Glimmer mist

- edge distressing tool OR scissors

- ink blending tool (or smoosher as Amy and I might call it...)

- sticker letters and/or other embellishments

- manilla tag (whatever size you like)

Step 1:

Take your lighter colored ink and "stamp" it all over your wax paper

Step 2:

Take your darker ink and do the same thing (you can add as many or as few colors as you like, but start with light & work your way to dark)

Step 3:

Spray the whole mess of it with some glimmer mist until it "bubbles" a little

Step 4:

This is where it gets a little messy! Take your tag and run it through your "mess" until it's all covered. The ink should be uneven, and the glimmer mist should be a little "drippy" (are you noticing all the "technical" terms here?!)

TIP: See that really dark one in the back? That's the first one I did...it was too dark, so when I sprayed on the glimmer mist, I sprayed some water to the mix too!

The tags might curl a little, but they'll flatten out when they dry.

Step 5:

Take your distressing tool and rough up the edges a little. If you don't have one of these doo dads, I cheat and use scissors, just hold them so they're open a smidge (think pacman) and run them along the edge of your tag

Step 6:

*Just before this next step was when we stamped our tags with the script stamp*

Take your ink blending tool & whatever color ink you like, and smoosh some color around the edge of the tag (it'll make the distressed edge show up a bit better)

Step 7:

Embellish.

I cut out names with my silhouette sd & adhesive vinyl. It's great to be able to make your own "sticker letters" - you never run out of vowels!

I also added some "conversation questions" to the backs!

I wanted to cut some shapes out of grunge paper with my silhouette - but it didn't cut all the way through. Instead, I trimmed around the edge with scissors. I painted them green & added some glitter!

I took some of my plain white paper flowers and started by pressing them against an ink pad. Then I dry brushed a little bit of acrylic paint onto the edges, and of course, followed with some glitter. When they were all dry I found it useful to crunch these flowers up a bit to make them less flat!