Italy At Tag Tuesday . . . . . . Or Even Saturday!

I'm a late with my tag this week for Tag Tuesday. House hunting is taking up lots of my time and just when we think we've found our dream home, something crops up and we start the process all over again!

The theme this week at Tag Tuesday is Italy. We have a really free hand to interpret the challenge in any way we please so I decided to make my tag background inspired by the colours of the many historic marble, stone and painted treasures I saw last year in Rome. I wanted to make a little pocket on the tag for some of the many, many photos I took.

Here's my tag and I should warn you that there a number of photos to illustrate the steps taken to make the tag:

The tag has a mixture of mediums used to help illustrate some of the things that inspired me during my visit.

A calico tag shape and another in thick card were cut and glued together. The calico layer was coated with DecoArt gesso and dried.

Two shades of DecoArt Traditions paint were applied to the calico fairly randomly and dried.

The same shades of paint were used through a script stencil again, in a random manner. Some gold coloured acrylic was applied through a leaf stencil. The gold represents the many sumptuous gold gilded treasures seen in the Vatican during our visit.

A pocket was cut using an On The Edge die and some of the waste was saved. Both layers were masked and painted with DecoArt Americana acrylics in the colours of the Italian flag.

Some DecoArt Modelling paste was mixed with DecoArt Traditions and Golden iridescent bronze. The mix was used through the script stencil used earlier. In real life, the modelling paste has a lovely golden brown hue.

Close up to show the stencilled modelling paste.

Scrap card was painted with the iridescent bronze, dried, then stamped with stazon using a Tim Holtz architectural stamp.

Letters were die cut from the painted, stamped card and applied to a label made from more scrap card. 

The random stamping on the card allows the stencilled background to show through the design.

An eyelet was attached to the label along with some beads on a jump ring (charity shop find) and some coiled rusty wire.

The word label was painted with the DecoArt Traditions shades used earlier. The edges were inked with distress to give a framed effect.

The waste card from the die cutting was used as bunting across the top of the flag, again in the colours of the Italian flag.

The top of the tag was finished using jute string and some rusty wire.

Just a handful of the photos taken on our visit to Rome last year.

Thanks for reading this far! Why not pop over to Tag Tuesday and see what the other artists have produced for their Italian tag?