Creativity Is Good For The Soul!

I worked on this tag for the November Challenge on Visible Image, which was simply to create a tag using their stamps.  I used a mix of some old favourites and one of their newer sentiments.  I couldn't resist this challenge as I love tags and also enjoy using Visible Image stamps.  Towards the end, I thought I had ruined the tag, but managed to come up with an idea which saved the day and enhanced the final look.

I worked on a #8 manilla tag and wanted to create an interesting background.  I therefore blended some Midnight Blue Artistry ink onto a blending mat, brayered it out a little, spritzed it with water and put some copy paper face down onto the blending mat to mop up the ink.  Once dry, I glued the area which I liked the best onto the tag, sealed it with Distress Collage medium, dried with a heat gun and then trimmed all round.

Having created a lovely grungy background in blue, I used stamps from the Ink Splats set and the Drag & Drip stamp set (both by Visible Image) to add some interest in the archival ink that was closest in colour to the background (Cornflower Blue).  These are some of my go to stamps for adding texture and interest to grungy backgrounds.  I particularly like the 'fingerprint' stamp from the Drag & Drip set.

I added a further layer of interest using the same stamp sets, but this time using Cobalt Blue archival ink.

I had a choice of sentiments that I could use from the Express Yourself stamp set (again from Visible Image).  I nearly chose 'Express Yourself with Art' but in the end, I preferred 'Creativity is good for the Soul' as you can see.  I was initially just going to stamp the sentiment in Jet Black archival ink.  Unfortunately the tag moved in the Tim Holtz stamp platform and I forgot to push it right back into the corner before I stamped for the second time (to get a really dark impression).

I nearly panicked and thought that the tag was ruined, however I realised that if I stamped the sentiment again over the top in Versamark ink and heat embossed it in True White detail embossing powder by Cosmic Shimmer, it would both hide the mistake and make it look like a drop shadow behind the sentiment.  I'm really glad that I made the mistake as the OOPS really did become an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly to quote Carolyn Dube!