Three Of A Kind. . . . . . . .

There's a new challenge today at Stamps & Stencils. Our host is the hugely creative Ruthand here's what she has to say:

'For this challenge we want to see 3 of the same sort of focal element on a project so we don't just mean 3 buttons or embellishments! It could be 3 flowers, 3 figures, 3 inspirational quotes?.....or thinking wider, if you're feeling adventurous you could do 3 ATC's, a trio of ATB's or maybe a Triptych. Plenty of scope, we hope, to make a mixed media project of your choice.Please remember it  must include some stencilling or stamping or both.'

I decided to make a tag with three hearts (er, well, three plus a half heart which I added by mistake!) and using three stencils. I've got quite a few tag bases which I cut from gelli plate prints I made so decided to work on one of those:

My 'Three Of A Kind' are the hearts and the three main stencils used on this tag:

Other stencils have been used but these are the main focus. Annoyingly, I forgot to take a photo of the tag before I started to add more layers! And yes, I'm very bad at cleaning my stencils!

All the hearts are stencilled onto the background using a DecoArt Crackle Paste. When dry, this is painted with Titan Buff Fluid Media Acrylic. Some of the letters are stencilled using this same colour.

All of the hearts have been washed with Quinacridone Gold Media Fluid Acrylic and this colour has been extended onto the background to make it look as if it has bled from the hearts. More stencilling is done using Prussian Blue from the same paint range - some of the letters and all the little stars.

The 'cup rings' have been stamped with Quin Gold paint as before. The little white circles are applied using a paintbrush protective tube and some Americana Chalky Paint from DecoArt. The other paint layers seen here are part of the original gelli plate print.

Extra depth is achieved by adding shading with a black colouring pencil. More paint stamping is visible here too. The top of the tag is finished with some curled rusty wire and tiny rusty bells. The edges of the tag are sponged with some Carbon Black Media Fluid Acrylic to help create a frame.

Another image to show how the edges are sponged and the pencil is used to add depth (on the large cog in the bottom left hand corner).

The products used to develop the original gelli plate print tag. The Matte Medium is applied to the tag to protect areas which I wanted to remain in their original state - this is really useful for instance, to keep the white areas clean as they won't be stained with other colours if this product is applied. The stamp is a favourite for building backgrounds; the plastic paintbrush is great for those little circles and the black Inktense pencil works it's magic on layered backgrounds.

I hope you like my take on the challenge! Please do go over to Stamps & Stencils to see what the other amazing DT ladies have come up. It's your turn now! Remember to check out further details such as rules and posting dates whilst you're there.

We had some absolutely amazing entries for our first challenge and you can see who the DT choose as the winner and top three if you pop back on Tuesday 12th May. Thank you so much to everyone who joined in and helped to make our first challenge so special.