Venting my frustration and some mixed media fun...

Hi everyone and thanks for dropping in today. I am going to start by sharing a journal page with you:

I had great fun doing this page and it's actually going to be my contribution to Tim' June tag. The original can of course be seen HERE. Absolutely nothing like the original, so that's where the frustration bit mentioned in the title of this post started....

I started off in good faith following Tim's techniques, but my results were awful!! No matter how hard I tried, I just did not get anything remotely like what I was after. I tried on many different substrates and with many different colours, here are just some of them:

I think part of it was perhaps due to the fact that I don't have the new minis yet and so I was using large (and rather old) ink pads. Anyway, I got more and more fed up and finally picked one and turned it into a tag I absolutely hated. Here it is:

This was the second attempt, the first one landed in the bin. I hate this one just as much but decided to keep it, even though as you can see by now I was in a pretty silly mood, I just kept it, because I want to have a complete set of tags and at least it fits kind of in with the others, all created with a size 8 tag on top of a size 10:

Ok so I could have left it there, but then I decided to play some more, this time in my journal. I also wanted to see whether the technique would perhaps work with Distress Paints rather than inks, and it did!!

I started with 3 colours of Distress paint, Antique Linen, Pumice Stone and Tumbled Glass and created a light background with the help of lots of water and some baby wipes. Next I used the stars stencil with the same three colours of paint. I dabbed them straight onto the stencil, sprayed lightly with water and then pressed down on the paper just like Tim shows. (I cleaned the stencil up straight away, this is obviously very important) Next I used three colours with Distress Inks, Pumice Stone, Tumbled Glass and Gathered Twigs on the Harlequin stencil. I think my practice had paid off a little because the result is not too bad I think.

I added some more normal stenciling with Pumice Stone in two opposite corners, using the Lattice Work stencil. Next came some background stamping and further stenciling:
:

I also added some strips of tissue tape.

Lastly I added one of my discarded try out tags and some vocal stamping using the Mercantile set:

Below you can see some close ups still:

The sentiment is from the Way with Words set. I cut the individual words out and then added shadows round the edges to make them pop a bit more against the background.

The vocal stamps were first stamped straight onto the background and then again on smooth card, cut out and coloured with Distress Inks.

Well there you have it, trial and error, but I am now glad I did not give up....

Thank you for visiting and I hope you are having a sunny week!!