Jenn Shurkus' July Blog Challenge

The report from CHA in brief:

I had such a crazy and fun first day of CHA! Running, running, limping a little too! Adventures included:

• For the Crafty Couture contest we were each provided the measurements of the mannequins the mixed media dresses would be going on.  Today we discovered that the mannequins are *four* inches bigger than the measurements given! Eeep! Sweet Niki Meiners was kind enough to help me wrestle my dress onto the mannequin (which involved cutting the dress open - urgh). 

(Quick iphone photo of me and the dress - the back is even better - more photos to come!)

• Jaime (owner of The Crafter's Workshop) and I had this vision of a clothesline strung across the top of the make-and-take table.  Quelle désastre!  We were stringing paper lanterns that kept falling down. And the two poles we strung the clothesline between kept falling down.  But my Mom came up with an excellent solution and I look forward to finding the whole thing still standing in the morning!
• I was a speaker on two super fun panels.  Thes first one involved some Mac vs. PC non-cooperation.  I built my presentation on a Mac. The venue played the presentation from a PC.  The videos would not cooperate.  Luckly the audience helped me figure out what to do.  Thank goodness crafters are a friendly bunch!
• The second panel involved a lot of people and I was the final speaker.  By the time they got to me there was no time left. I had about a minute-and-a-half to rush through what I had to say. But I still had lots and lots of fun!

All in all a great day!  Looking forward to another one.  And now here is today's regularly scheduled post:

Jenn Shurkus has a really fun project on her blog this month.  Basically to force herself to kick her artistic butt into gear, she's posting something with a nautical/summer theme every day this month.  And she has tons of guests lined up (including me)!  Read more about it here.

And this is the piece that I made:

Here is the process, step-by-step:

1 - Stencil

Dab Distress Stain through the Triangle Stencil.

Flip the stencil over so that what you've stenciled is now obscured...

...and use another color of Distress Stain.

This is the result:

2 - Distress

Spray a ton of water at the center of the tag and dry with a heat gun.

This creates a sort of beachy washed out look.

3 - Create a Strip

For this step I used a promotional card that came in my Studio Calico kit.  The other side of the card is an advertisement for their chipboard letters.  You could use patterned paper instead.

I cut along the pattern lines to create a wavy shaped strip.

I repeated the same thing on the other side of the center seal so that I had two pieces.  I overlapped the two pieces to create a longer strip...

...and then adhered the strip to my tag.

The original strip was just not quite long enough.  But now we have way too much.  So I trimmed away the excess:

4 - Ticket Time

I stamped one of Julie's Journaling Labels onto a book page...

...and cut it out.

Then I added waves and a fish with watercolor paints.

I stabbed this cute little metal embellishment from The Girls' Paperie through the ticket...

...and then added foam adhesive to the back of the whole thing...

...so that I could adhere it to the tag.

5 - Flags

This is a pre-made flag from Pebbles...

...but you can make your own following this tutorial.  I used Golden Fluid Acrylics to paint the word "summer" on the flag.

Then I added the painted flag and a polka dot flag to the tag:

6- Finishing Touches

I added two finishing touches to the tag: (1) I inked around the edges of the tag with brown Distress Ink, and (2) I added some blue watercolor droplets.

So there you have it!  Quick and easy tag!

Thanks for stopping by!