Grungy Monday...on Sunday

So I was on vacation from work all week, and of course, when I have all the time in the world, my crafty mojo also takes a vacation and I manage to make almost nothing the whole week. It finally kicked in yesterday, and I decided to make something for this week's Grungy Monday challenge at the last minute. The challenge this week was to make something using the paint dabber resist technique used here by Tim on an older 12 Tags of Christmas post. I ended up making a tag for this, and it was pretty fun because I had no plan, I just decided I would play around with my Distress Inks and see what came of it. Here's the finished product:

I used the white paint dabber and Wild Honey, Worn Lipstick, and Victorian Velvet Distress Inks for the background. I stamped the ruler image from Tim's Curiosities stamp set with black Archival ink and then a flourish from the Urban Grunge clear stamp set with Vintage Photo. (I had to heat set the Vintage Photo to get it to stay on the paint streaks) The flower was cut out of Grungeboard with Tim's Tattered Florals die and then colored with the same 3 Distress Inks in the background plus some Stormy Sky and Bundled Sage. The edges of the tag and the flower were inked with Vintage Photo. At this point I think I should mention (again =P) how much I love Distress Inks and how beautiful they are. I feel like I did very little to make that flower and yet it turned out great - the Distress Inks really did all the work for me. Here's a close-up:

Here you can see that the brad in the middle is actually a globe image - another awesome stash find that has been floating around forever. Last but not least I stamped the sentiment. I actually had this sentiment on a stamp but it was too small and I didn't think the font matched the rest of the tag, so I stamped it by hand using an awesome Sizzix stamp set I just got on clearance. It may have just been upgraded to favorite alphabet set. =) The sentiment was also done in black Archival but I really wish I would have had a brown color instead....I think the black may be a little stark compared to the rest of the project. I wanted to use Archival though to make sure it stayed put on top of the paint streaks. Overall I still like it, but I think brown would have been better. Adding that to my shopping list now.....

I'll also be entering this tag in the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge ("anything goes") and the Drunken Stampers challenge (numbers). Both fun blogs...check them out! =)

Thanks for looking!

*~M~*