Lucky Clover - the new Dare over at Emerald Creek!

Servus and welcome to the start of the latest of Emerald Creek's Dares!

With St. Patrick's Day fast approaching the theme for this dare is 

"Lucky Clover - Bring on the Green"

by which we want you to think Irish, greens, clovers, gold, leprechauns, beer,....

...and except for the beer and the leprechauns I have incorporated all of the above with my tag:

To create this tag I used stuff most of which can be bought at the Emerald Creek Online store:

Emerald Creek St. Paddy's Day embossing powder
Emerald Creek Flower Pin Wheel brad
Distress paints: peeled paint, mowed lawn, twisted citron, squeezed lemonade, tarnished brass
Distress inks:  hickory smoke, black soot
Ranger blending tool
Ranger heat tool
Ranger craft sheet
Splatter brush
Dreamweaver stencil (Irish ornament)
Embossing ink dabber
green lace ribbon
double sided sticky tape
permanent fine tip black marker


The tag may look quite simple in its making at first glance, but I paid a lot of attention to smaller details as I wanted a simple desing and also the ornament and brad to remain the focal pieces without having anything drawing too much attention off them. On the other hand every spot on a project should be done properly and with purpose and play its own role in enhancing the main effects and look.

So the first thing I did was use some of the delicious greens from the Distress paints range to create a marbled background.

I also used a fine tip brush to sprinkle on some Distress paint while the other paints were still wet, taking the paint directly from the unscrewed bottle.

Then I cut a tag from that part of the marbled card I liked most, using my Sizzix and the Tim Holtz "Tag and Bookplates" die.

To make the greens on my tag pop a bit more I blended the whole tag with Hickory Smoke Distress ink, using my blending tool.

Using the awesome "St. Paddy's Day" Emerald Creek embossing powder, the lovely Irish ornament Dreamweaver stencil and an embossing ink dabber I created my focal piece to which I wanted to add the gorgeous Flower Pin Wheel brad later (as I find it looks like a four leaf clover).

To enhance the contast I added some black soot Distress ink around the edges and the heat embossed image.
See what a difference that makes?

Next I added fine splatters of "tarnished brass" Distress paint using the fab splatter brush I recently helped myself to. (love it!!!)

At that point I decided to make the Irish ornament pop even more and add some black line drawing to my tag.

To have this not be the only area on my tag with black line drawing I also added a thin outline to my tag and the hole on top. Repeating techniques (or colours, shapes or patterns) on a project helps make them become less prominent and more part of the whole design. It will also help blend in my planned on handwriting.

I used some embossing ink from the dabber and spread it in three different areas on my tag with my fingertip - to repeat the texture and colour of the St. Paddy's Day embossing powder too.

To add my handwritten sentiment I first wrote it on a piece of paper...trying to already find the appropriate size of the letters and widths of the lines.

Then I cut these out and positioned them on my tag to find the best places for them (regarding composition).

I decided to go for the second version (even though I like the first one too). Having the cut out word strips also helps with writing directly onto the tag afterwards as you can simply move them up a bit and use them as your model to follow.

Using handwriting instead of glued on word strips also is the better choice if you find the word strips too dominant with a design. Of course you could also glue these on directly if that looks better. But writing directly onto the created background always is the better means to "fuse" your text with the project.

For a finish (and to repeat the lighter greens from the background) I added some green lace ribbon using double sided sticky tape. Then I painted my Ds, Os and Rs with squeezed lemonade (using a very fine detail brush)...

 ... et voilá!

Not tired of greens and clovers yet? Great - then hop over to the Emerald Creek Dares blog to check out the makes of my fantastic teamies!!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia

xxx