Orange, Brown and White at Artful Times. . . .

As the title suggests, the theme at Artful Times is to use orange, brown and white in your work. Quite a difficult combination for me. I could imagine using two of the colours together but kept getting stuck by adding in the third.

I decided to start by choosing an image I wanted to use and then went from there. I chose one of my favourite Lynne Perella stamps and decided to make a tag (again!!). I aimed for a very distressed, aged look somewhat akin to old wall paintings which have either deteriorated over time or have been uncovered hundreds of years later.

I used layers of acrylic paint and some sanding to create my background. At one point I was going to add more to the background but I decided to leave it alone because I felt it works better just as it is. See what you think when you look at my tag:

As you can see, I had some trouble with the sharp light today - I just couldn't seem to get the right light for the photos! My tag was intended to give the look of an old distempered wall with a chalky top coat and layers of subdued colour underneath.

The flower is die cut and coloured with dylusion ink and shimmer spray. The centre of the flower was created using a brad with a coloured gem. The leaves were cut from crunchy paper coloured with alcohol inks. Both flower and leaves were shaped after assembly.

The sentiment was computer generated and coloured with inks to match the acrylic colours used. The language is Latin and in English reads: 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. I used this because the tag is very distressed looking but some will still find it beautiful - others may not!! The vintage style seam binding at the top of the tag was coloured with relevant shades of distress ink.

The image was stamped using archival coffee ink to fit the theme colours. You can see here that various shades of orange and brown peep through the sanded areas of paint. I like the way the warm white paint allows the ink to look distressed too, even though it was a first generation stamp.

Slightly blurred - sorry! The lace is die cut in kraft paper. This was inked and some warm white acrylic paint was added to tone in with the background. The jute twine was added as a finishing touch with a natural look.

Thanks for having a look at my work. I enjoyed using paint and will certainly use it again - I particularly liked the fact that if it went wrong, I could just paint over it and start again!