A Big OOPS, but Saved in the End!

This tag was created for the April challenge on Tag It Tuesday.  This months prompts are: Use a stamp; Collage with napkins; Add stars; Use markers.  At least three of the prompts have to be used and for once I used all four; if you can count a paper towel mop up sheet as a napkin.  I made a horrendous mistake half way through the process, but I managed to save the tag rather than throw it away!

In place of a napkin, I adhered the top layer of a paper towel mop up sheet onto a #8 manilla tag, sealed, dried and trimmed it.

To add stars, I used one of the stamps from the Great Outdoors set (Stampers' Anonymous/Tim Holtz) several times at the top of the tag; stamping in Versamark ink and heat embossing with detail silver EP.

I then intensified the colours of the background by adding Faded Jeans and Peacock Feathers Distress Oxides.  This caused the stars to become a little muted and I wish that I had done this step before adding them.

It was the next step which caused me to consider throwing the tag away and starting again.  I added one of the stamps from the new Tim Holtz Theories set, heat embossing in blue.  As you can see, it made a complete mess.  Because the background is not smooth, the stamp didn't make a clear impression and the embossing powder was not fine enough to bring out the detail sufficiently.

However, I liked the background too much to throw the tag away.  Instead, I found an image that was large enough to cover the mistake and which could fit in with the theme.  Looking through my stamp stash, I came across the Candle Outline set from Claritystamp.  Just the right size, as well as being easy to fussy cut.  It was stamped in Cobalt Archival ink onto a spare bit of Sheena's stamping card.  The scene was created by using one of the Spots masks to create a moon and the Mountains & Hills mask (both from Claritystamp) to create the background.  I brushed Faded Jeans and Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide over the candle to tie in with the background of the tag.  The same stars stamp as before (Great Outdoors) was also used to tie everything together.  The larger star stamp comes with the Candle Outline set.  The tree cluster (from the Snow Globe Outline set) and the individual fir tree (Stag Outline set) were stamped in Library Green Archival ink to finish off the scene.  These steps more than cover the 'use a stamp' element of the prompt.

The flame was coloured in using some of my Ecoline water colour brush markers; which covered the final prompt requirement.  Once finished, the image was fussy cut and added to the tag, covering the earlier error.

Finally, one of the Small Talk stickers (Tim Holtz idea-ology) was cut into three and added as a sentiment.