Saturday Showcase - Floral Tags for The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog

Hi everyone and welcome. Today for the last Saturday Showcase post of June 2020 over at The Funkie Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog everyone in the Design Team has joined together to share floral tags, each one with a tutorial - so you're getting even more 'bang for your buck' today. For my tag I've taken the opportunity to create with some of the Seth Apter/Aladine Izink inks and ICE gels and no surprise, I love them.

Thing is, most of us have inks already in our stash, so what makes these different (in my opinion of course). Here's just a few I've found so far - they are definitely versatile, with many ways to use them (a few are shown below) they pack a punch in terms of strength of colour, they have those translucent qualities that make layering a breeze and they are permanent when dry which means they won't move if you want to add anything over the top.

Let's get started with seeing some of that experimentation and versatility. I don't yet have many of the sprays in the line but that's not a problem when it comes to covering larger surfaces. I mixed up a little of the 'Cotton Candy' and 'Roast Chestnut' Izink Pigment Inks and diluted them with water. Strips of plain cotton were dipped into each mixture to soak up the liquid before drying. You'll see below how I made two different shades by including more of the 'Roast Chestnut' colour for the bottom one. Then I diluted a little of the 'Lycee' (the deeper pink colour) and dipped one side of each strip into it to intensify the colour and create a contrast.

For this tag I ended up choosing to use the lighter of the two strips of cotton, dividing it into two pieces before rolling each one up to form rosebud shapes. You'll see how some of the darker side was revealed by folding down some of the fabric at the top. Craft wire was then wound around the base of each bud to hold them in place and create stems.

Now to cover the wire and make it more realistic. One of Wendy Vecchi's Washi's (from Assortment 1) proved to be ideal.

I decided to add a little shimmer to the top of each bud by using the built in brushes in each bottle lid to apply some 'Improper Copper' and 'Opal Frost' Izink Pigment Ink directly to the fabric. That sparkle worked beautifully even on such a porous surface.

To create the blue strip on the tag I once again diluted some of the Pigment Ink (this time 'Thundercloud') with water before brushing it onto a scrap of book paper. You can dip and dry as with other inks and paints to get a multi-tonal look easily. And then to give it more of a vintage aged look I dripped a little of the 'Coffee' Dye Spray onto the paper, encouraging it to form drips and runs by spritzing it all with water.

The main layer of the tag is an old book page which worked well in terms of colour so I didn't want to alter that too much. Instead I scraped a mix of  'Greenland' and 'Snowball' Izink ICE through a Tim Holtz stencil to create a raised textured surface with a shimmer. And to compliment that further I diluted a little 'Olive Drab' Izink Pigment Ink with water and splattered it onto the page with a small paintbrush.

Now here's a tip - the ICE glazes add strength to thinner paper making them easier to die cut using the more intricate dies. Using a palette knife I spread a little of the 'Glacier Green' and 'Frozen Peas' Izink ICE over some thin book paper - be careful when pushing the gel out from the pack as you only need a little and it's easy to get carried away). Allow each gel layer to dry before applying the next to get a better look and then spray with more of the 'Coffee' Izink Dye Spray over the top to fill in any gaps. You can see below how I used Tim Holtz 'Cut Out Leaves' Thinlits Dies to create the shapes before cutting around them to make the delicate filigree leaves.

OK, now for the part of this tutorial that has me most excited of all. Remember that piece of painted paper from my last project HERE, made from mopping up the residue on my gel plate from a play session with Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints - well I chopped a piece off to cover a large tag and transformed it from this...

... to this using just Izink Pigment Inks (in this case 'Avalanche', 'Stratosphere', 'Thundercloud' and 'Royal Gold'). It's that transformation that for me makes these inks a game changer. I love making backgrounds with several layers of paint building on top of each other to form depth and interest to the final look and have discovered that these bottles of magic add a whole new dimension to that process. Pick colours that coordinate with those in your background, add a few drops, immediately scrape through them with a spatula to move them around the surface whilst still wet and see what a different they make. And because they are translucent when worked this way, dry rapidly and are permanent you don't get mud when adding more colours.

You'll hopefully see what I mean in the piece below which started life with a combo of oranges, reds, buff and a tiny touch of teal. Add white, red, gold and blues and see the way it transforms. Stamp on top (Wendy Vecchi's background 'All Stitched Up') and you have another layer. Why is this so important? Imagine, you've pulled a number of gel prints on larger pieces of paper or card and need to add smaller pieces to a collage only they need a slight tweak colourwise - pull out your Izink Pigment Inks and within a few short moments you can have just the piece you need, leaving the rest to be altered in other ways for other projects. It is truly going to make a huge difference to my projects going forward.

Back to the tag, and with all the elements made it was just a case of layering them together. I added a little pattern paper underneath the stencilled book page, a piece of plain calico fabric above, layered the blue and red pieces on top and glued in place the flowers before securing them with hand stitching. There's also a stamped circle (Tim Holtz 'Field Notes' stamp set) and the leaves plus a sentiment from an older Dina Wakley Media set. the addition of faux stitching in a metallic lime around the edge of the tag echoed the leaves and stems as well as adding a border to the piece. Here are some close ups;

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my own experiments for this tag with Seth Apter's Aladine Izink range. There'll be much more to come in the future. Meantime I hope you'll hop over to the  to see what my talented team mates have created for their floral tags - our styles and end results are so diverse that there's lots to see and find out from them all.

Thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx

Products used to create this tag are available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique and are listed/linked below.

Seth Apter Izink by Aladine Pigment Inks, Dye Sprays and ICE

Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints

Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Washi Assortment 1

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Background Stamp - All Scratched Up

Sizzix Chapter 1 Tim Holtz Thinlits Dies - Cut Out Leaves

Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Grime