Tuesday, April 19, 2011

A Little Trash, A Little Stash

So, this is the challenge:  make something with unusual elements, recycled items, or repurposed ones.  Hmmm.  Well, this is the trash I started with:


  • brown paper bag
  • tabs from Diet Pepsi cans
  • catalog
  • plastic packaging material
  • cork from bottle of wine
And abracadabra, this is what I wound up with:



First of all, I took that cork and carved a little design into it to create my backgrounds.  I stamped it repeatedly onto tags with black acrylic paint.


I recently had a nice meal with my friend Pat and we finished a bottle of wine. (No big surprise there.)  I took the cork home, knowing I'd use it in something, but didn't have stamp making in mind at the time.  But doesn't it create a cool graphic?  And on some tags I angled the stamp differently, resulting in new patterns. 
When the paint was completely dry, I swiped each tag with a different color of distress stain.  Instant and vibrant coverage.  Here's a closer view of one of the tags:


The soda can tab was glued to the top as the ribbon holder.

The rosette (Tim's new mini) was cut from a page in the catalog.  After assembly, it was pounced with some gesso, and when that dried, it got a spritz of color wash.  Now it's a flower.
The flower center is a pom-pom kind of thingy made from a strip of the brown paper bag.  I rolled it tightly around a thin paint brush, glued it together, then made several cuts from the top to just above the base to create that fringe, and glued it down with matte multi medium.

The leaf was cut with Tim's new mini leaf/branch die from the plastic packaging material, colored with markers, and heated for a moment so it could be bent a little.  I could have also used alcohol inks, but the markers were closer and didn't require moving three boxes to get to.  Sometimes I think this blog should be called Memoirs of a Lazy Crafter.

Some ball chain from my stash created the stem.

The lovely sentiment is a Wendy Vecchi stamp, cut apart so the words would fill the empty space on the side.















16 comments:

Marjie Kemper said...

Great tags - neat idea with the cork and how cool to recycle so much

Alicia B said...

How awesome is this Eileen!! Amazing use of discarded items for sure! *Hugs*

Kathy Eddy said...

These turned out great eileen! I love that background. I am saving corks to make a wreath with but I am going to need soooo many of them.

Nancy Lynn said...

Brillant uses for all those items. I think what you did with all of those items are incredible. The pop can tab is great and I love the wine cork idea for background design. I have seen sacks of those corks at the thrift store and wondered what in the world would I use those for.......well I guess you have answered that question. Thanks a lot. And those pop can tabs....well I guess I had better safe them now.....well I am off to my recycle bin to get those pop can tabs. I love how the tags turned out a lot.

Anonymous said...

Oh how FUN...I LOVE it!!!!

Tolegranny said...

Love these tags. Love what you did with the background.

flojo said...

Very clever use of throw away items. I have tons of corks and tons of can tabs but don't know what to do with them. If anybody wants any, I will share. My email is Sjones510@verizon.net.

Vic said...

Fantastic tags! Love the wine cork stamp.

Patzee said...

These tags look amazing! I love the vibrant colors of the distress stain. And your wine cork design is so clever. Looks like I gotta make the sacrifice and open another bottle of wine.

Melody (lacyquilter) said...

Very cool way to repurpose & go green.

Unknown said...

Eileen, these are way cool tags!!!!!!!!!!!

Lori said...

Very cool idea to use that cork as a stamp! Love the tags, that background came out fantastic!

Lillian said...

the whole tag is so cool Eileen
love your stamp
Lilli
http://www.canadianscraptramp.blogspot.com/

Valerie Brincheck said...

You're an absolute genius. I never would have guessed that you could create such wonderful tags from the pile of junk you started with. I especially love the pop can tabs as the ribbon holders. (I may have to steal that one.)

Lisa F. said...

Fantastic!! Love, love, LOVE!!

Sherry Goodloe said...

VERY cool Eileen . . . very cool.