Tims September Tag

Here is my tag for T!ms September tag challenge and I will also enter it into the CCC2 challenge which theme this week is also Riveted Patchwork:

I found this months challenge a big challenge to keep to my British theme - I spent two weeks trying to work out how to make the patchwork look like a London Bus (yes honestly - mad I know! but luckily all designs were kept in my head and I didn't put pen to paper and waste too much time), anyway after two weeks of pondering I decided to scratch that idea and keep with the good old Union Flag as my background.

Here is the base of my tag before I added the embellishments:

all metal applied and:

then the piece trimmed and etched with my metal tools (never been used and I have had them for about a year - oops!).  Then imagine the horror when I turned the tag to start positioning the embellishments to realise that I had done the flag upside down!  That would never sit well with me so rather than redoing the whole thing I just took off the four small pink pieces and repositioned them - phew quick fix there!

I then added Oregano and Slate alcohol inks all over and then burnished the tag with a steel brush - I didn't over burnish as I wanted to leave some of the colour even though I had used pink and light blue - just to make the fact that it is the Union Flag stand out after the embellishments had been added.  I then wanted to use an English quote of some kind on the paper but I still can't bring myself to cut up my extra copies of Harry Potter or the Gruffalo (fabulous artwork for backgrounds in that) so I printed out the lyrics to "Made In England" by Elton John inked it with Old Paper and Vintage Photo and adhered it to the tag with my trusty T!m stapler - I kept the typewriter much the same as T!ms as I loved the effect with my sheet saying "Made In England" too.  I then added some metal cogs, spinners and brads inked in Denim, Snow Cap and Red Pepper alcohol inks and layered them into sets of red, white and blue colours, added the film strip ribbon and pen nib after I had written "Elton" and put a blob of black ink on the end of the nib.  To finish I decided to use a metal chain rather than ribbon and added some red, white and blue pins with red, white and blue beads (again dyed with alcohol inks) and then a metal heart inked with Red Pepper alcohol ink and metal tag inked with Snow Cap alcohol ink.  I love the way you can still see the flag in the background even though the ink took some of the colour off the pink metal - I also omitted the metal numeral to showcase more of the background but other than that I kept the embellishments pretty much the same as T!ms this time as I liked them so much.

If you would like to join in the challenge over at T!ms go here and if you would like to join in with the technique over at Studio L3 which is the Compendium of Curiosities Compendium 2 challenge no. 22 then click here.  For the CCC2 challenge you need to use the technique on page 57 of T!ms book, post without giving away all the technique details and also say that the http://www.TheFunkieJunkie.com are giving away a $25 shopping spree prize then add your link to the inlinkz provided.

Can I just say a big hi to my newest follower Daryl and then that's all from me on this very rainy morning in the UK - makes a change from all the sunshine we have been having doesn't it!

Thanks for looking - Rained In from Solihull