Going with the flow

Colour inspirations come from all sorts of places, I have some favourite go to blogs and I have a whole book of cut out snippets from magazines of colour combinations I like, I never look at it but I quite enjoy the cutting and sticking.  Anyway a colour combination seeped into my brain and grabbed my attention this week of brown / neutral, yellow and a touch of green.

What I ended up with was grey, purple, red and a bit of yellow and green - different but still good.

I knew I wanted to use a tag cut from kraft card that had some very subtle stamping on it to act as a background and then something stamped over the top in black.  Using coffee archival I stamped a texty background stamp from some of the new PaperArtsy Vintage plates, it was too heavy and obvious (should have used sepia). So put some Irish Cream Fresco Finish over the top, yep toned it down. Added a few touches of Haystack, some stencilling in cinnamon using the mini tile stencil (it's great for a little bit of colour here and there and adding another layer) and some stamping this time in a softer brown.

Stamped the winged madam from this plate in grey stazon and coloured her in using oil pastels.  Edged round her in the grey and white oil paint to lift her of the page a bit (there will be a technical art term for this but I haven't got a clue). Added some more oil pastel on the edge of the tag as well to frame it.

Background, this is where I deviated from the original yellow and neutral colour scheme and chose a piece of grey card (cut to 8x8 size).  Added some London Night Fresco Finish over it just to break up the flatness of the page and then used mini circle grid stencil over the top in places where I knew the tag wouldn't be using French Roast (have I said how much I love this colour) and a touch of London Night that was left on the craft mat. Added a few lines with an old credit card down the edges as well.

Stamped some text on the left of the page and then added some spots of colour using the oil pastels to match / echo the tag.  Love using the pastels in this way just to add a spot of colour to tie the whole composition in together. 

Always knew I wanted to use a strip of corrugated card over the top of the tag and played around for ages with string and fabric on the card, under the tag trying to work out what looked best. from a colour and grounding point of view (I really don't like it when things like embellishments look just sort of plonked on the page randomly too far apart from each other and not linked together either by colour or using that triangle technique they using in kitchen planning  - you know the one where the key three elements of a kitchen: fridge, sink and oven are at the corners of a triangle).

Finally went with some purple paper string from John Lewis (bought for Christmas and never used to wrap parcels) stapled on the card, some scrap red paper under the tag stamped and edged in Seedless Preserve Distress ink. I've also used some more of my Prima flowers (the stash isn't going down) with some card candi for the centres, I squashed the card candi so they weren't as raised.

Once everything was stuck down I went round the edge of the tag with some more oil pastels just to define / frame it a bit more.   

I will go back to my original idea of neutral / yellow and green, the idea is a good one and I think I can "see it" better now that I've got this idea out and on paper.  But before I tackle that one I HAVE to make a fabric book, so quick tidy up and out with the sewing machine!

hugs

jo
xx