Seeing Red!

Hello all, Alison here, and delighted to be back with the first of my new monthly posts here at Artistic Outpost.  I thought I should mark the occasion with something dramatic - and also a dramatically different colour palette for me!

I know they've got butterflies all over, but by the time these tags were finished, I couldn't help thinking of the children's chant as I was making this...

Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home!
Your house is on fire and your children all gone.

The fiery colours are Distress Stains and Inks, applied using Tim Holtz's wrinkle-free distress technique.  When I do this technique, there's always excess ink on the mat, so I make sure I have a couple of tags available to use it up.

More often than not, I end up with a matching pair, therefore - one in full intense colour...

... and the other usually a little more delicate in hue.

The fabulously detailed house is from the SteamPunk plate.  I guess it's officially a station - but it's such a lovely building, I'll use it anywhere!

And the beautiful butterfly is from the Flower Market set.  All the stamping is done in either Plum or Sienna Archival inks, or in a combination of the two, blended onto the stamp.

I've used some of the Sizzix Butterfly Frenzy butterflies, cut out of book pages and inked, to add dimension.

At this point, I was thinking quite cosy thoughts, so I added the word Home, from (you guessed it) the Home plate.

It wasn't until I stepped back and looked at the completed tags that I realised how fiery they looked, and that's when the ominous refrain took over!  So I added the extra words using one of my little alphabets...

A little Distress-dyed (charred?) ribbon and some frayed twine finishes things off at the top, and we're all done.

I'd love to know what you make of my foray into the red end of the colour palette!  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you again next month.

Designer: Alison Bomber
Words and Pictures