Love is in the Air by Amanda Southern

Hi Everyone

Love is in the air this week as Valentine's Day looms this Thursday and I have some love for you in the form of a grungy heart tag with lots of rusty textures.

I have had so much fun and made so much mess creating this tag lol

Here's What I Did:

My starting point was the tag which is a size 8 That's Crafty MDF tag and it's all about the layers. First layer was to add some torn book pages and strips of washi tape onto the tag. Onto that I scraped on some heavy white gesso and left it to dry. I then gave that a watered down layer of That's Crafty sandstone paint. I then layered on Decoart gold paint, onto that a watered down layer of quinacridone gold. I then smeared around the edges Decoart crackle paint and left that to dry. Once that was dry I sponged around the edges of the tag with burnt umber, quinacridone gold and paynes grey darkening all around. I then rubbed into the cracks of the crackle with colbalt blue teal.

Next was to make up my components to add to my tag. All the pieces I have used are That's Crafty substrates. The heart is MDF and the wings and large and small cogs are That's Crafty greyboard pieces. I started with the heart.

I used 2 hearts and with a fine tooth saw cut one of the hearts in half.

I began with the complete heart drawing a line down the centre and then glueing on the smaller hearts some being cut to not cross the line as I had to glue the cut half of the heart on. I also added some texture sand paste on parts of the cogs and then painted then all, firstly with a base coat of grey and then layering up the colours that I had used for the tag until I had the result I required. 

For the other side of the heart I glued on some of the teabag paper that That's Crafty sell (I'm falling in love with this paper) I crumbled it up before glueing it on with matt medium. I tore the edge as I wanted the torn edge to overlap the cogs so it looked like the heart had been torn open. It was then given a couple of layers of Christmas red paint and then I added a watered down black paint to it to tone it down and give a grungy look. It was then glued into place and I trimmed off all the spare teabag paper.

For the wings I first drew around them where they would stick to the back of the heart and masked these sections off, this makes it easier to glue them on. I then applied a layer of texture paste with a spatula and used the spatula create the texture, once dry they were treated with the same paint colours to the effect I wanted

The Large cog got a similar treatment but this time using sand paste

I then constructed the tag by adding my pieces, all was given a coating of ultra matt varnish which really dulls down the acrylic paints.

Here you can see the layers once assembled

I then added the text by stamping onto card that I had coloured using Distress Oxides wrinkle free technique, the words were cut out and edged with distress ink. I even added an hole enforcer to the tag that had had the same sand texture treatment as above as did the number 14 that I added to the heart.

Here's What I Used:

That's Crafty! MDF Tag #8 (Pack of 6)

MDF Heart #3 Pack of 12

That's Crafty! Greyboard Bits & Pieces: Large Cogs/Small Cogs & Small Wings

That's Crafty! Mediums: Texture Paste & Sand Texture Paste  

That's Crafty! Tea Bag Paper

DecoArt Mediums: Crackle paint, Ultra Matte Varnish & Matt Medium 

Finnabair Art Basics: Heavy Gesso White

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics: Paynes Grey, Metallic Gold, Quinacridone Gold, Colbolt Teal Hue, Titan Buff, Raw Umber

That's Crafty! Multi Surface Paints: Christmas Red, Sandstone & Grey

Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Ink Pads: Peacock Feathers, Vintage Photo, Tea Dye, Walnut Stain, Rusty Hinge & antique Linen

Tim Holtz Distress Inks: Rusty Hinge & Peacock Feathers

PaperArtsy Stamps Set: PAEAB08 Strength & Courage

Versafine Clair Ink Pad: Noctourne

That's Crafty! Multi Purpose Craft Glue

Hole Enforcer

Numbers

Washing Up Sponge

Book Pages

Have a fabulous Valentine's Day this Thursday and I will see you all next Tuesday

Love

Amanda X