My Cards and Tags: Artsy Tag using Maker's Movement Nested Tags and Paper Rose's Wildflower 2 Die

Our challenge this week over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog is to create your own background.  We're also highlighting products from a great company called Paper Rose.  They have some dies that are A+++!

Whenever I start a background, I like to lay something down on the paper just to get the creative juices flowing and so that I'm not staring at an intimidatingly blank page.  Even if I end up covering that initial "layer," it helps to get me moving.  Often I start with Washi tape and that's what I did with this tag.  I put on a nice thick strip of Altenew's Many Dots Washi tape, then sprinkled on some Infusions stain and spritzed it with water.  I also added some acrylic paint.

The thing that makes Infusions stain powder unique is that each color is mixed with a walnut brown, which gets "muddier" depending on how much water you add.  So you have the base color plus that additional mix of brown.  I spritzed and dried the stain.  It was dark, but another beautiful thing about Infusions is that if you add a layer of white acrylic paint over the top of it (which I did), the Infusions color bleeds up through it.  I didn't add any other paint (except for the green dots), but you can see all the cool pastel tones that came to the surface from the dark layer of Infusions underneath.  I like the surprise of seeing what the Infusions will do when mixed with water and after being painted over.

Next I cut this beautiful flower silhouette with Paper Rose's Wildflowers 2 die and my Sizzix Big Shot and outlined it a bit with a black Sharpie to make the edges stand out.

The last step was to glue my flower to my tag and add the word "Artsy," which I got from an Inky Antics' stamp set called, "Stamps of Merit."

Here are the supplies I used that you can find at Simon Says Stamp:

Makers Movement Nested Box Tags Die Set	Paper Rose Wildflowers 2 Die	Altenew Many Dots Washi Tape	Inky Antics Stamps of Merit stamp set	Tim Holtz Dotted Stencil
Strathmore Mixed Media Paper	Sizzix Big Shot	Paper Artsy RUSTY CAR Infusions Colored Stain CS17	Paper Artsy Are You Cerise Infusions Colored Stain	Paper Artsy OLIVE TREE Infusions Colored Stain CS16
Dina Wakley Ranger WHITE acrylic paint	Dina Wakley Turquoise paint	Dina Wakley Peacock Acrylic Paint	Dina Wakley Olive Acrylic paint	Tim Holtz DISTRESS SPRAYER
Black Permanent Sharpie Marker	Ranger Non Stick Craft Sheet	Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink Pad	Tim Holtz Grid Acrylic Blocks

We are looking forward to seeing what backgrounds you create this week!  Upload your projects to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog for your chance to win a $25 voucher to the Simon Says Stamp store!