WOYWW - Horace creates a tag and page

Hello there, gosh, yet another Wednesday? Well that means yet another desk hop around the world courtesy of Julia at Stamping Ground.



It's Horace hosting the House of Bears' desk this week. On my 'desk', which is actually the kitchen table above, is a rather natty table cover with coloured splats! now when I make a mess it doesn't show! also on the table-desk is my Pink Pig art journal, a blank tag, and some Cosmic Shimmer and Dylusions mists, which I'd moved through from the bedroom ready for my crafternoon! There, if you're into short and sweet, that will do for the WOYWW post this week. ;)

However, if, like the bears, you're into long and waffly, or you've been directed here from Dragonsdream blog, you have the pleasure of my company for considerably longer!

I'd decided to play along with this fortnight's fab challenge at Dragonsdream which was titled 'Handle With Care', the recipe being an animal, something fragile, and some kind of warning, well how could I resist that one? Here I am looking delectable with my finished tag. I've included a close up at the end of this long and laborious explanation of my projects.



For those who would rather not read all that though, my animal is my stamped bear, which is also my something fragile, as he is a vintage bear, but also fragile is the Victorian chair in the right hand corner of the tag, I've sanded the picture, and distressed it with inks for a more aged effect. The warning on the tag is '' V.O.B. Very old bear, Fragile, Handle with care'.

I decided to complete a journal page at the same time as my tag, and as I was using mists, the kitchen table was placed in the middle of the room and covered in our fab plastic paint splat cover. I didn't want to mist Cedric's newly decorated bedroom walls and there's not enough room to move our craft desk away from the corner where it nestles. Whenever I mist, I seem to send the spray in every direction except the one I'm aiming for.


The left hand side of my journal had been completed some time back, so I covered it up with Wilbear's crossword magazine, I'm sure he won't mind.


First I decided on my colours; gold and brown shimmer mists, and orange chalk mist.


I misted my art journal page with the three colours, then dabbed my tag into the wet colours.


I gave everything a quick blast with the heat gun, then misted water through my masks. Having tried two different brands of mists for this technique,
I must conclude that this seems to work better with Dylusions than Shimmer mists.



See what I mean? You don't get such an obvious relief effect with the shimmers but it is enough of an effect to enable me to carry on.



Next I took our one and only distress stain,


and SLAMMED it down into the page in a random manner. Tip - this part would be great to do when angry!!! You can really 'whump' the stain onto the page, assuaging any anger inside at the same time as producing the most amazing splatty patterns. We learnt this technique at a Papermazeworkshop , which is our local craft shop. The class was run by Louise Collins, who has her own fab Blog full of interesting techniques and ideas.


I had to remember, this page was in tandem with my Dragon's dream tag, so replicated all the techniques onto the tag.


I had some white doily hearts, so I misted and distressed one to use on the journal page.


I thought I'd move back to the bedroom for the next stage of my project, as I'd finished my messy misting stage. But, bears are easily distracted, and on the way to continue crafting, I stopped to speak to the guinea pigs we foster for Suffolk Animal Rescue. They're called Fred and Ginger, and we're looking after them until they find their forever home.


Sorry, sidetracked there, back to the bedroom. I printed out some suitable sentiments on the computer, and cut them into strips.


Which I then scrumpled up (it's much like human crumpling, but done with paws!)


I then used the Tim Holtz distress tool on the edges of the strips,


put on my paw protectors



and distressed my paper strips with Scattered Straw distress ink, for an aged look.


Keeping my paw protectors on, I started to adhere my elements to my page and tag.



Voila, a cute bear and a cute journal page


And a close up of the page. The sentiments read the same as on the tag: 'handle with care', 'fragile' and 'V.O.B. very old bear'.


And here is a close up on the tag, as promised earlier.



Thanks once again to the team at Dragonsdream for such a great challenge, I really enjoyed this one.

Now it's time for me to pad along to peruse some craft desk, oh. Before I go though, don't forget the bears host their very own monthly literary based challenges, plenty of time still to enter this Month's challenge, which is Your Cubhood/Childhood Favourite. We'd love it if you'd play along with us.

With love from the bears.