Creative Ways to Use Tags

Yes - how do you use the good old basic manila office tag in your creative endeavors.  My friend Ivanka and I are taking a free online class Creative JumpStart coordinated by Nat Kalbach and one of the videos is using tags.  Since both of us are basically card makers - we adapted what we learned to make cards.  We decided we would challenge each other to make something with our tags - and post today.

Of course I did not have any office tags to use that you can buy in packages.  But I did have some old recycled manila file folders - so I found a file on my Silhouette and cut myself a bunch of tags.  Most of them I left the hole out.  So in that respect I did cheat a little but it is the same basic material as a tag you would purchase.

Here is my first card - I painted the tag with acrylic paint.  After the paint was dry, I cut myself a stencil with a circle design on it with my Silhouette.  I just rubbed ink over the dots onto the tag.  I then used the tag as the focal point for a very simple masculine card.  The patterned paper is from Authentique.  The sentiment is from Hero Arts.

My second card is a birthday card for my daughter.  I imagine she is going to wonder what artistic endeavor her mother was up to because this is not my traditional type of card.  The tag was painted with green acrylic paint - the same as the one above.  I then used a die cut (the stripes and dabbed some blue paint on - well a little blue paint strayed so then I added more blue paint.  After it was dried - I then came in and did some stamping with Gesso - the big circles were stamped with a bottle cap I dipped in the gesso.  The white dots were done with the end of a pen dipped in the gesso.  The green background in also a piece of manila folder painted with the green paint and then I had to add more circles to coordinate with the tag.  The sentiment is stamped on more painted folder.  I like that sentiment for a birthday card - I will be a little late with the card. I added some dyed seam binding to make the card a little feminine.  Hopefully she likes it.

My last card is entirely different than the other two (can you see I have had so much fun doing this) - sometimes you just need to do some different things with your creativity.  The tag and the heart are cut with the Silhouette from the manila folder material.  I then got out my Tattered Angels glimmer mist which never gets used and sprayed my elements.  Of course, the color of the card - was based on my limited supply of glimmer mists.  Luckily I had a pink and brown - a wonderful color combination for creating.  I also misted a doily I had in my supplies - the background script paper is a piece that was laying on the floor that worked wonderful into the design.  I dug into my bag of cream/white trims - found the tea dyed lace, the torn strips of muslin which is tea dyed and that cream color trim.  In the bag was also that little piece of pearls.  I ran the tag through the Cuddlebug.  I added twine to a large cream colored button I had.  The muslin bow was tied with the twine.   I added part of a Love sticker from SRM Stickers.  

The card is for the weekly challenge from The Paper Players to make a "love is in the air" card.  This valentine will go to my Mom - pink is her favorite color.  

I hope you enjoyed my creating with tags - try something new - that is what Ivanka and I are trying to do.  Her word for 2013 is "different" and this type of creating is very "different" for me - hop over to her blog and check her creations out.