All hand-made, in a particular mix of polymers which I like to use.Nomoulds were used to make this pin/pendant. All the feathers you see are all hand-made, no two are the same, and each one applied individually by hand. There is, however, one golden, metal feather nestled amongst all the other feathers. Can you spot it?
Suspended beneath the Angel wingsis a glass phial which holds a measured amount of Angel Dust. The lid was applied and then sealed, never to be opened,so that the Angel Dust will be with you forever. Finally, three more feathers were applied to the glass phial, each feather symbolizing Charity, Hope and Faith.
I loved making this pin/pendant and now that it’s finished I love it even more. Hope you like it too.
Thank you so much for coming to visit, and for taking the time to read. While you’re here, please do have a look around. There are many categories on my blog and you can find the links to those categories further up the column on the right hand side of this page. → → →
Huggies … a crafters best friend in the craft room
There’s one product that, as a crafter, I’ve never ever been without in my craft room and that product is Huggies Baby Wipes. They’re the most incredible thing for clean up jobs – for work tops, blending mats, glass cutting mats and they’re brilliant for cleaning your hands after you’ve been playing in your inks and blending.
They work with paint, stamp pad inks, spills, and all the general madness which goes on in craft rooms. They’re FANDABBYDOZY at cleaning up glitter – and we all know how that can spread itself around the place. The glitter sticks to the Huggies wipe and you can just collect it all up and straight into the bin!
Price wise, here in the UK, I normally find them for around £1. I know that Superdrug normally stock them for 99p; and I’ve bought them from Tesco’s when they’re on offer – and stock up with them when they’re on a buy one get one free. Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Boots and Waitrose either stock them for a pound or you can buy 2 for £2 – (buying just one pack makes them more than a pound, but buy two at the same time and you get the offer).
Huggies actually make six different wipes, but I only ever use Huggies Pure which are in a soft biscuit coloured pack, (see a pack at the top of this post) or Huggies Natural Care – which are in the familiar green pack.
Not just for babies bottoms!
For Stampers – those who use rubber stamps to craft – Huggies are one of the best wipes to use as they contain no alcohol. Alcohol is a stamps worst enemy as it slowly breaks down the rubber of the stamp and you then end up with a print which is exceptionally poor, and since stamps are so expensive they’re worth taking care of.
Now I know that there are special wipes which are apparently made just for crafters. There are, I’m led to believe, even wipes that are made for crafters which can be used, washed and re-used. But … why would you want to do that? If that’s what you want to do, then why not buy old towels from a charity shop, cut them into wipe sized squares and use those? Surely the one thing us crafters don’t want to spend time doing is using the washing machine and sorting whites, mixed colours, woollens, darks and … crafting wipes! (You really wouldn’t want to wash them with your lovely clothes!) . And besides which … I’ve looked on the internet and these ‘special crafters’ wipes cost a fortune!
Nope … my recommendation of the weekyear CENTURY, is Huggies Baby Wipes.
Oh .. and want to know something else great about them?I’ve found that the Huggies Pure wipes (the ones in the biscuit coloured pack) – are fantastic for removing your cosmetics at the end of the day, and boy do they leave your face soft! Double whammy! Yay.
In part three of this ongoing ‘explanation’ of Tag Art, I’m hoping to show you not to be discouraged by some of the fabulous pictures of Tag Art which you’ll find on the internet, particularly on Pinterest. The Tags I showed you last time (in part two) were simple enough to bring together without breaking out in a sweat or giving you the feeling that you could never achieve anything like the little flower tags which I produced last time. This tag, which you’ve had a glimpse of (above) is just as simple as the flower tags! There are just a few extra bits and pieces on it and a couple of ‘techniques’ which are so easy that I know a child could cope with them. Aw, enough talk, let’s get going shall we? ….
If you decide to create along with these photo’s then remember that the theme of your tag doesn’t have to be ‘Alice in Wonderland’, it could be any thing you want. Rabbits … Cats… Dogs… Travel … Balloons … even colours! But to start with you might find it easier to get the results you’re after if you start off with an idea or subject in mind where you can find up to roughly five or six different things about it which will pull the whole thing together and make the tag have some sort of ‘dialogue’. A kind of ‘story’. Things which relate to each other in some way.
I started with … a few tiny cards and some tags …
I’d had these little cards for a while, given to me by another crafter, but I’d never had a chance to use them. The Tag itself was from a pack of cheap tags which I’d bought on impulse for about 60p from The Works (UK cheapy book & stationery store). The tags were a little too thin individually, so in order to ensure that they would take the weight of some embellishments I glued three tags together with Collall glue – which I love for crafting as it dries quickly.
Three tags glued and ready … time to dress this tag up!
Let’s get our finger tips mucky!
Because I knew I wanted to have a gentle Steampunk look to the tag I ‘distressed’ the edges of the tag with some die from my quick drying ink pads. I started off with a warm, rich brown (which you can see in the photo above), and using a make up sponge (yes – just cheap make up sponges that you can buy in the £ shops – I just use them and throw them away), I fold over the sponge and dabbing it onto the ink pad to pick up some ink, then gently blend it around the edges of the Tag. At this point I should advise that the best place to do this blending is either on a blending mat (see mine in the photograph above) OR on a glass mat.
I know you can buy expensive glass mats for crafting (I even have one) but you don’t need to pay the prices that they charge for those. One of those glass kitchen chopping boards that they sell for just a few pounds work in exactly the same way.
After blending the brown, I then changed to a black ink pad and very lightly blended a narrow pale smudge of the black ink around the edges. It just gives it a depth.
Shall we stamp?
I’ve got an assortment of different stamps and chose one which said ‘Believe’, mounted it onto a rocker block (but a mount of your choice is fine) and using a cheap ‘Ink it Up’ embossing pad, I stamped the word out onto the Tag – but because I wanted a distressed look to the stamping I didn’t press too hard, so that the eventually embossed image would be a little bit patchy. I then chose a teal/navy type colour to emboss the word with, went to work with the heat gun!
Well would you Believe it!
… and this was the result. Because the word was a tiny bit patchy, I made sure that you could read what the word was by inking around the word using a very fine tipped Staedtler pen.
A close up so that you can see the pen lines.
Now at this point I’ll just interrupt proceedings to say … you should ‘tag’ your Tag Art just as a fine painter would sign his signature on an oil painting. You don’t want someone else telling folks that they’ve made that incredible tag when it was really your sweat and tears which made it, do you!
Here’s what I use to ‘tag’ my Tag Art:
Tag the Tag Art!
I bought this as an unmounted rubber stamp about six years ago – I think through Ebay. But you really don’t need a specialised stamp. You could either just sign your name on the reverse of your tag – or if you want a stamped image, there’s a plethora of general stamps which have a variety of different tag shapes – and you could choose one of those, which would give you the opportunity of naming your tag and signing it inside the frame of the stamped image, which would give it the importance it deserves!
You could, if you wanted, get a stamp made for yourself with your own design. (But check Ebay for cheaper alternatives!)
Right, we’ve glued, blended and generally got the tag all ready for some decorations. Let’s get going on those shall we?
My ‘theme’ for this tag was to be decided by those little playing cards.
I could have done a tag about magic tricks … perhaps some white gloves to go with the cards? … or hmm.. what ‘thing’ has playing cards featured in it? I wondered…. ahh… Alice in Wonderland! Ok.. I found my theme. What did Alice in W. have in the film? A mirror(both in AiW and in Alice through the Looking Glass) … Roses! – the song: “we’re painting the roses red …” … A bottle with a tag saying ‘Drink Me’! Ohhh… now we’re getting somewhere!
The Mad Hatter! The White Rabbit!
The ideas came thick and fast… I had to write them down because my memory is shot to pieces!
Ok … got the ideas.. now I had to come up with the goods from the stock I had in my craft room:
I’ll make the mirror … and the little bottle which Alice drinks from!
Initially I thought I would use a little glass bottle on the tag, to represent the bottle Alice drinks from, but I didn’t have a bottle small enough .. (well no, actually that’s not true. I do have some, I just couldn’t find the darn things!). I got out my cauldron melt-pot and some supplies:-Silicon moulds – one in the shape of a little bottle, and the other in the shape of a mirror. Pearl Ex Powders to give some gentle, shimmering colour to the mirror and bottle, (you can use general Mica powders if that’s what you personally use). Cosmic Shimmers Clear Ultra Thick embossing powder. Cosmic Shimmer Melt Pot Ink in red. And some Pearl Ultra Thick embossing powder. I set to work:
“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Fillet of a Fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog . . . . “ etc etc etc (words courtesy of Shakespeare)
A peep into the Cauldron – I mean – the Melt Pot!
You know what the best thing is about the Melt Pot? If you ever don’t like what you’ve made you simply throw it back into the pot, melt it and start again!
See that little pink blob in the well at the wide end of the melt pot? It was a bottle which over-flowed the mould, so when it had cooled – just a minute or two – I put it back and did it again!
The cauldron has done its work. Aw, don’t you just love magic spells? (lol)
The little rose that you see in the photograph above was one which I made when I last had my melt pot out. I’d got some extra cream/white coloured liquid left so I used it up making a few flowers. Originally the Rose was actually this creamy white colour:
I should have taken a photograph of the rose(s) before I coloured them but got craft happy and totally forgot! tsk tsk! I used some Creative Expressions gilding wax on the roses and then brushed some lovely rose-red and warm rose-pink mica powders onto them to change them from their original creamy colour to the red. (sings:)“Painting the roses red, yes painting the roses red. Not pink Not green. Not aquamarine . . . ” etc etc etc
The Mad Hatter has visited and loaned me his hat!
Next was the Mad Hatters hat. Quite a distinctive hat. Now I’ve recently been bought a gift of a Tonic Die which cuts a Top Hat … so I was lucky with this. BUT … you don’t need to have a die which will cut a hat. The hat is a simple enough shape but if you’re not confident with drawing one then just find an image on the internet and print it out onto cheap printer paper and you can then just draw around it onto your black card stock and cut it out. Simples. I cut the matte black part of the hat above on my die cutting machine, and then I drew around the actual hat die itself onto some dark mirror board, (which I then cut out with scissors) so that I could sit (glue) the matte black top hat on top of it and give the top hat a bit of ‘life’, where the light caught on the edges of the mirror card.
10/6 ? – cheap at half the price!
I added a little dark ruby-red rayon seam binding (regular ribbon would work just as well), made the 10/6 price tag & added it to the hat band with a dab of glue.
The hat pin is made from the cut off end of a cocktail stick, which I coloured in silver paint, added a black round bead to the end and then tucked it behind the ribbon with a little glue to keep it in place. For a bit of twinkly sparkle, I added the ultra twinkling flat backed embellishment. But … although the hat looked the part, I felt it looked too ‘new’. It needed to look dusty or a bit old and shambles sort of thing … so in order to get a look of ‘dusty’ – I dribbled a very light line of white pva glue and sprinkled a little Flower Soft onto the glue and left it to dry. It was the nearest thing to dust that I could manage in a crafty way.
So .. We’ve now got the Mad Hatters Hat … but where should we put this? It’s big, so I want it to go in the right place – but I don’t want it to shout louder than the other things on the tag … so where shall I put it? How about here? … or Here? …
… or should I put it here? …
… or do I think this way looks right? Yup … The Mad Hatters Hat should be at the top there. (oh.. see what I mean about it looking too ‘new’ without the ‘dust’? This photo was taken before I’d added the The Flower Soft, which gave it that certain ‘thing’ which it was missing)
Yes … right there. That’s exactly where it should be!
SO: –– We’ve got the mini playing cards …. for the Queen of Hearts playing card soldiers …
mini playing cards
The Red Roses from the song: Painting the Roses Red …
“painting the roses red, we’re painting the roses red!”
… The little bottle with the tag on it saying: Drink Me! Which I made in the Melting Pot …
Drink Me … oh do Drink Me!
And … hmm… well I made a little hand mirror but somehow it doesn’t look right. It’s too showy. Too (almost) bossy. It’s trying to be the star of the show and that just isn’t right.No.I decided that the mirror just wasn’t right … so I had a bit of a search round the craft room and came up with the very thing which was missing ….
The White Rabbits Watch! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, I’m …. over-due, I’m in a rabbit stew ….” eeek!
Aw, of course! It was the White Rabbits fob watch which was missing!
I played around with things until I felt they were in their rightful places and then one at a time I fixed them into place. Some with good old PVA glue, others with foam pads, and the rest with my faithful friend: hot glue from my trusty glue gun.
The Alice Tag – May 2014
I added a aubergine coloured ribbon and VOILA! One almost Steampunk (but not quite), Alice in Wonderland Tag.
The Tag could now be used as a fancy gift tag on a gift to someone special. It could be framed in one of those box frames. Mounted to the front of a card and given for someone’s birthday. Put into a box just for you to look at. Put into an album or folder which you keep all your tags in. Or anything that your imagination can come up with. You could even sell it on Etsy; Ebay; Facebook; Craft Fair… or any other place which you might sell your art work.
Or you could do what I do … I have a huge clothes peg (the type you use to pin your clothes to the washing line, but huge) – which is meant as a memo holder or photograph holder. I use two of them in my craft room and pin bits of artwork to them. I use one of them to pin the latest bit of something which I’ve just made, and that way I get a moving bit of artwork which never stands still!
This is it, pinched in the pincers of the peg … on my craft desk. (yes that’s all my junk specialist, important equipment behind it which I’ve blurred out so that you can see the tag rather than the junk gorgeous, crafting stash stuff.)
Alice in a Tag made by Cobwebs
And ..shall I tell you a secret? … This tag was made totally from stash in my craft room that I already had. Most of it I’d had for ages. The newest thing (apart from the Tonic Die I used – which was a gift) has to be that little fob watch. I’ve had that about nine months (roughly). It was a cheap and cheerful pack of four different watches for 99p. See … you really don’t have to go to any big expense to make Tag Art. They pretty much make themselves!
Well, there endeth Part 3 of‘Tag Art – right from the beginning’. I hope you’re not asleep across your keyboard! But if you are ….
WAKE UP AND GO AND CRAFT SOMETHING!
Tsk tsk … can’t have you sleeping when you could be crafting, now, can we?
Thanks for taking the time to come, visit and have a read. Have a really great rest of your day. ~
P.S.Don’t forget to leave me a comment. Let me know if you have a go at making a tag, or, if you have any questions at all, please ask away! I’m not one of those crafters who won’t share information. I’m more than happy to help other folks with their craft projects.
The Ranger Melt Pot about to go into action! (with a little help from Cobwebs!)
The Cauldron (aka ‘The Ranger Melt Pot’) came out to play because I had an idea for a handmade card, but wanted a pair of Angel Wings to go onto the card as an embellishment. I’d got feathered wings, but I felt that they’d give the wrong feeling to the card, so I scouted round to find something different .. that’s when I remembered that I had a pair of silicon moulds of Angel Wings. I dug them out and checked them over for any damage (I hadn’t used the moulds in … ohh … I can’t even remember the last time I’d used them!), and then got out the equipment to make the wings. Heat mats (biscuit coloured one and the black one you see in the photo), Cauldron, spatula to stir, mica powders, and Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals – in clear and white. Then I set to work.
I always put more than I think I’ll need of the crystals into my melt pot as I’d hate to find that I run out of liquid before I’d filled my moulds, so I also put on my desk a couple of other silicon moulds so that any left over liquid could be made into other adornments for other cards some other time.
Crystals were popped into my Cauldron and within minutes I was ready to pour out the magic mix. (After I’d said a magic spell, waved my wand and flew my broom around my craft room three times with my cat perched neatly on the end, naturally).
The Silicon moulds I used for the wings were bought from America but I’m pretty sure you’d be able to now buy something like them here in the UK. They’re roughly 3 inches in length so ideal for a card adornment. I brushed the tiniest amount of mica powder into the silicon mould before I poured the liquid, so that the feathers on the wings would be highlighted with the faintest of colour.(You can just about see the Mica powder in the photograph above).
At this point I get so excited about the stuff I’ve just poured that I totally forgot to take a photograph of the moulds in use – so you’ll have to imagine what those moulds look like filled up with magic potion I mean: Ultra Thick Embossing Crystals in their molten state.
It takes literally just a few minutes for the liquid to set – but beware it does stay a little hot/very warm for a few minutes longer, so be careful. And this (below) is what the Angle Wings look like when I popped them from their moulds . . . .
You can see where the feathers picked up the Mica powder which I’d brushed into the empty mould before I poured in the molten liquid UTEE. Pretty isn’t it. You can see from this picture that you really don’t need to use very much Mica Powder at all. If you compare the photograph of the empty moulds before I poured the UTEE into them, and then see how the set UTEE has picked up that Mica Powder really well.
I was right to get another mould or two out as I did have some extra liquid left over, so I made some flowers with the left over UTEE . . .
I’ll lightly colour up the flowers and centres with a little wax to highlight and pick out the details. – my favourite wax is Metallic Gilding Wax from Creative Expressions – shown in the photograph above.
BUT … if you do make something with your own Melt Pot, and you have left over molten UTEE then you can simply pour it out onto your heat-resistant mat and let it set for a few minutes (and go cold), and you’ll then be able to pop that blob of set UTEE into a bag and save it till you want to make something in that colour next time. You see … you never waste anything with the Melt Pot. You just re-melt anything you’re not happy with or that you have left over, and make something lovely and new next time you’re playing!
The Art of Cobwebs 