Guest Designer - Val Thorpe

We are pleased to welcome a Guest Designer for the March Madness challenge.  Val Thorpe was the top pick from the Let Me Count the Ways challenge and you can find her work on her blog, Val-Belle's Ramblings.

My name I Val Thorpe and I live in Johannesburg, South Africa. I am married (42 years) to Simon and we have two kids, and three grandkids. I have been crafting most of my life in one form or another and I have been scrapbooking since about 2004. I love to make cards, tags, art journal pages and of course scrapbooking. I am honoured to have been chosen to be a Guest Designer here at Frilly and Funkie. I have a blog if you would like to see more of what I do - just visit me HERE.

For this challenge I chose to make a tag. I love tags because I can really play without fear of messing up. I started with a white tag 4 ¼ by 8 ½ made from mixed media paper.

I chose to use two silk screen stencils, one is the stack of teacups and the other is the splats and script, and used white acrylic paint through them to create a resist. I love these stencils because you get such a thin coat of paint through them. I let it dry and then covered the tag with a tea dye distress oxide blend. I went around the tag with walnut stain to darken the edges, then buffed it up to reveal the white stenciling. I used a number stamp in a couple of places and watercolour painted the teacups with distress inks.

I added an acetate clock which I cut and added in two places. The characters from Alice in Wonderland I found on line and cut them out and used the quote from the Mad Hatter that says… ‘Have I gone MAD? I’m afraid so. You’re entirely BONKERS. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the BEST people are.’ I ended the tag off by backing it onto a slightly bigger black tag and put some seam binding in white and tea dye with a bit of black twine and I had attached a key to - to the tag and stuck in a couple of big pearl pins and a few flowers.

* * *

To get all the details of Val's tag and see more of her wonderful work, check out her blog. When you are done there. come on back and share your March Madness creation with us. The challenge runs through 11:55 pm EST on Tuesday, April 9th and can be found HERE.

Don't forget to check in on Saturday for another inspiring Saturday Showcase and then next Wednesday, the gals on the funkie side of the team will be here to share their March Madness creations.