Jackanory What's the Story: A Favourite Tag

I love making tags.  They are a great way to try out techniques or create a quick piece of artwork.  I also like using inky paper towels or brayer mop up sheets for a quick background.  This tag combines both in response to a set of prompts plus one of my favourite Clarity stamp sets. Here's the story of how it was made: #ClarityOpenDayFestival.

The first prompt was to make a tag; I didn't have to as I had a large stash of #8 manilla tags and at the time Clarity didn't make any tag dies.  Now I could have used any of the largest nesting tag dies in the Clarity range.  The second was to use scrap paper; I covered the tag with a piece of copy paper that I had used to clean my brayer off when creating a gelli print using Golden Hi Flow acrylic paints  The paper was sealed with matte gel medium, dried thoroughly and trimmed.

A third prompt was to use a stamp, a fourth to use blue and a fifth to add a favourite saying.  I combined all three in one step by stamping the Carpe Diem stamp from Claritystamp directly onto the tag using Majestic Blue Versafine ink and heat embossing in detail clear EP.  I then used a blue Sakura PN micron pen to colour in the lettering.

I also stamped and heat embossed - this time in Onyx Black Versafine - one of the large stamps from the Hats 2 set by Claritystamp onto a separate piece of card.  This was coloured using my small selection of Kuretake Clean Colour pens, fussy cut and added to the tag.

The final prompt was to add a border, so I blended the Van Gogh Phthalo Blue Oil Pastel (Royal Talens) along the edges.  I had to seal the tag otherwise the oil pastel would have eventually rubbed off.

Jackanory What's the story: My First Art Journal Page

As part of #ClarityOpenDayFestival we are sharing stories of pieces of art work that are special to us.  This is the story of my first ever art journal page.  I had had an empty Art Journal for nearly a year and the pages had scared me to death.  By chance, I happened to come across the Mission Inspiration group on Facebook and liked the idea of having to follow a set of instructions to create an art journal page.  I therefore accepted August 2016's mission and I was really happy with my first attempt, using Clarity stamps of course!

 

Jackanory What's the Story: My First Clarity Sample

 I was highly honoured to be asked to join the Clarity design team while visiting the NEC back in November 2018.  The story behind this artwork is that it is the first ever sample that I made for Clarity, with products for the inaugural craftalong on the Craft Channel on 17th February 2019.  I have now made over 500 samples and have loved every minute, but I still look back fondly on my first. #ClarityOpen DayFestival.

Jackanory What's the Story: My Blog and My First Canvas

 I turned 50 back in 2015 and first started my blog one week before the event.  Today happens to coincide with my 1800th blog post.  Back then, although I was heavily into paper crafting, mixed media was not something I had ever really tried.  This is the story of my first ever canvas for the #ClarityOpenDayFestival this weekend.

I had had some small 5" x 7" canvas boards sitting on a shelf daring me to use them for over a month at the time - this was before Clarity canvas boards - this would work great on a Clarity A5 canvas board.  Then I saw the Clarity challenge for August 2015.  My choice was a no brainer - horizontal line - Stencil, Stamp, Grunge Paste!