Gesso, and IOD tape, and dies. Oh My!

Today we're going to play with all sorts of fun products from Ranger! 

First I went ahead and inked a tag with the foam blending tool and the broken china, frayed burlap, and evergreen bough distress inks.

Once I was happy with the look of my tag, I got out my Prima IOD tape.  It comes on a regular looking tape dispenser, but the clear tape has images on it.  This one is the alphabet tape.  I put strips of the alphabet tape on the tag.  The great thing about this tape is that because it is clear, the colors of the ink still show through.

 Next, I got out my Cut-n-Dry stamp pad foam.  This stuff is great for blending ink, for applying paint, for applying gesso, and for tons of other things.  It comes in a whole sheet like this:

But all you need is to cut off a little square like this. One sheet of foam will last you a long time.  I used to use makeup sponges, but these are SO much nicer!

Today, I'm using the foam to apply a light coat of white gesso from Claudine Hellmuth.  The gesso is wonderful to use as a primer before painting, or to use for a distressed look in white, or for just painting something white.

 

So, I applied a very light coat of the white gesso over the middle of the tag, and brushed it in with the foam.

Next I used one of my favorite Tim Holtz Alteration dies, and cut out this dress form and then inked it with the evergreen bough and brushed corduroy distress inks.

I then used a beautiful blue ribbon from Making Memories that I found in my stash.  I wrapped it around the waist of the dress form and fastened it with one of Tim Holtz's memo pins.

I inked one of Tim's adage tickets in the brushed corduroy and used the memo pin to attach it to the dress form.

I popped the entire dress form up and attached it to the tag to finish the whole thing up, and here is the final product:

Hopefully this will inspire you to make your own creations using some of these techniques.  If you do, I'd love to see what you do!  Patrice and I will be at St Andrews this weekend, where you can show us any of your creations or buy any of the materials we used to make this tag!  Hope to see you there, and thanks for looking!