Free Yourself

Hi.  This tag actually looks so much better in person.  I just could not get the lighting and my camera to work together.  The whole tag is a bit representative of how I sometimes feel.  I keep a lot bottled up... my thoughts, emotions. I allow my thoughts to sometimes spin and spin.  Over the past few months I've learnt to journal my thoughts and feelings, to express them to those I need to express them to, and to basically Free myself from the cage I keep myself in.  This tag is what this is all about and a reminder to me when I start to feel like this...

I wanted to do something with foil today.  First I took some scrap paper and cut various triangular shapes and glued them randomly onto my tag.  Then I cut a piece of foil from my Tim Holtz stash of goodies, and stuck it onto the tag covering my triangles.  I used my boning folder and pressed around the edges of the raised triangles and shaped them thru the foil.  I then took the tip of a closed pen and pressed into areas of the foil to make the circle marks, and also a embossing tool with a relatively small bulb on it to draw in some X's, lines etc to other areas until I was satisfied with the result.  From here I took the sanding block and sanded overtop of the raised triangles to etch them a bit.  Then I used some alcohol ink in Aqua and applied it to the foiled area just to give the foil a tint of color.  I inked black around the foil area to color the paper part of the tag that was exposed.

I used the Dusty Attic hinges chip board and base painted it with Distress paint Black.  Once dry I rubbed Viva Inka Gold in Graphite first overtop and then Inka Gold Silver to give it a mottled antiqued kind of look. 

Next I tore a square piece of cardstock and sprayed it with Art Anthology spray in Raider, which is a really nice matte black spray.  Almost gives it that matte chalkboard effect.  I also tore two small pieces for the script Free Yourself.  I didn't have a stamp that said what I wanted it to so I hand wrote it in to mimic my own journaling.  I glued the white pieces to the black and then also attached with a glue dot one of the Idea-ology pen nibs and it says thoughts which is finely engraved into it. 

I stamped the image of the girls face onto some white cardstock and tinted it slightly with some Tattered Angels shimmer mist in Black Magic and Smooch spray in white.  I sprayed both colors onto my craft sheet and ran the image thru it to give it a softer look than the starchy white image alone.  I set it aside to dry. 

I used 2 different brands of gears.  The largest one is from 7Gypsies and the two smaller ones are Idea-ology mini gears, all in the tarnished silver.  I found the bird cage pendant at Michael's from Industrial Chic. 

Now it was time to assemble all the pieces to the tag.  I laid down the birdcage first so I could fit all the rest of the pieces around it to my liking.  I then glued down my face image, the black paper with the pen nib, then the hinges.  Once the glue was dry under the hinges I added the mini brads in both black and silver.  I didn't have enough black to do them all so I had to get creative with the two colors.  Next I glued down the gears and attached the bird cage with my yarn. 

And this was a little like homework for me today.  In a good way.  It's kind of neat that our crafts become expressive art.  Now onto some chores today and supper.  Toodahloo...