 Hi and welcome back to another Mixed Media Tuesday. Today I'm going to create a layered tag journal. It is a super fun project that I will create from start to finish, all five of those pages and I will mostly focus on the collage technique. For this project today I'm also playing with products from the latest release by Art by Marlene since I had so many requests for that. The release has a lot of fun products I will be playing with the tag journal today. There is also a booklet of tags that you can use if you want to make your own tag journal but if you follow my videos you already probably know that I absolutely love the die-cut booklets. I always like to pop out images from these ones and that's exactly what I'm going to do today for my pages and there are also collage papers I will be playing with them today as well. There are stencils, there are stamps, lots and lots of fun products that you can check out if you want to. You will find links to everything down below. Everything is currently available at Jogles. Move fast if you like something because Art by Marlene products usually sell out super fast and keep in mind that there is a 15% off discount in the links down below. I'm going to play with a layered tag journal kit. You will find at the top three holes so you can bind them together. The paper is quite thick so it takes nicely any type of medium. You can work on top of that with sprays or with acrylic paint. Just go ahead and use whatever you feel like. It includes 21 tags and you will find inside tags with a tab at the top at the middle and at the bottom so you can mix and match and create your own. Now you will also find four dies included as well as six different rings to bind your journal and there are black three black as well as three rose gold ones. Taking into account the 15% off discount at the moment you will get this kit for less than $20 and I think it is a great price for value. So anyway let's start playing and the idea here is to use these dies and cut out parts from the bottom of the tag so that you can have a layered look. You don't have to use them this way. You can use the dies to cut out different spaces and stick them on top of your tag journal. However I'm going to go with a suggested idea because I find it really fun. So I have placed and secured all the dies in different tags with washi tape and I'm going to use five tags. Four of them will have one of each of these dies and one of them is going to be the pack. Now Marlene says that these have to be used with a metal sheen. However I didn't have any problems. They aren't as thick as such adjusted so I'm going to show you what I did. I made sure that I placed the die on an angle and I'm following the standard sandwich. I'm just running it through few times back and forth just to make sure and I did cut it out with no problems at all. If you find that you have some problems with your die cutting machine then just use a metal sheen or just use a couple of cardstock to increase the pressure and have a thicker sandwich. I'm repeating the same process for all the tags and don't throw away the leftovers. You will find that for the top tag you will almost remove half of it. So just keep that paper. It is nice and thick and you can always stamp on top. Different images cut them out and stick them again on top of the actual tags. And here are all the tags ready to go to create my little tag journal, layered tag journal. Now if you want you can use it vertically or horizontally. It's completely up to you how you decide to use it. I decided to go vertically for today and as I said in the beginning I'm going to create all the pages by using the collage technique. For that I am going to use papers from the collage papers by the latest release. You will find here colorful backgrounds that you can stick on any mixed media project and I'm going to use one page from this pad and I decided to go with this one by using different areas of this collage paper. You can have many tags with different backgrounds. They will look similar but not the same. I'm also bringing in a second pad. Again lovely backgrounds to use and I'm going to use this blue one for some of the pages. Now I'm going to use pretty much everything from those two collage papers to cover up my five tags. You can go front and back if you like and of course you can work with other mediums instead of just sticking collage on top. You can go with your paints with your sprays and I did share many videos on how you can make backgrounds. I didn't want to use any other collage paper and you will find that some of the tags are not going to be covered completely with a collage paper. So I may have a tab from a tag sticking out. This is not a problem. I can always go ahead and cover it up with paint. I can stick something on top and you will see how I will overcome this type of problem. I am using my mat medium to stick my collage paper on top of my tags. Firstly I apply a generous layer of my medium and then I stick the paper on top. If you want you can go over the collage paper to make sure that it is nicely stuck there. This is going to seal the paper at the same time but this is not necessary. I did that on the first tag but I'm not going to repeat it on the next ones. Another thing that you can keep in mind I didn't do that because I wasn't thinking ahead is that you can cover up your tag before you die cut it. This way you will have the lovely design of the collage paper on the die cut area as well. Mine will all end up white since I didn't do that in the beginning but I can always go ahead and cover them up with paint which I'm going to do later on for two of the tags. After my mat medium was dry and everything is nicely stuck there I'm using my scissors to go around the tags to make them nice and neat. I'm also using my cropped dial to have those holes at the top back again. I'm also using a sanding block and I'm going around the edges. This is going to make it look nice and neat and finally I'm ready to start working on my pages. The background already looks super interesting. It has stenciling, it has lots of colors however I'm doing some stamping. For that I'm using my doodle stamps. This stamp set is from an older release but it is a must-have for art journalists. I am using the one with tiny little dots with black ink and I'm also going to add some white splashes just because I like the look. Once everything is dry I'm going to bring in my die cut pieces so that I can look through the designs and decide what I want to go with for the first page. Now here I am looking for a border and I decided to go with the first one that I found. This is going to go at the bottom to kind of bring together that lace look with the rest of the design. I'm sticking everything down with my Nouveau Deluxe glue. You can use any type of glue that you like and I find this process really satisfying and relaxing. I just go through the pages to try and decide what I want to work with. Here I went with that big flower and at the center I wanted to add this girl. I wanted to reflect myself on the first page of this attack journal. Of course I don't have pink hair but I do have red glasses and that's why I decided to give her red glasses just like mine. I want to have the top of a body for hair so I'm going on another page and I will pick up one of those bodies. I'm going to use only the top of that and I want that flower to work as a frame. That's why I am cutting a slit using my craft knife there so that I can thread through the body and then I can stick on top the head. I'm going to cut off the excess of the body but I'm not going to throw it away. I like to have a little envelope along with each one of those booklets so if I take out a few pieces that I don't finally use and they don't end up on one of my projects then I can just put them back on that envelope and keep them together with a tag book. This way I don't lose anything and I can play along with them for another project. Another thing that I always do but I don't show it always on camera is that I go around those die cuts with a black marker to get rid of the white edge. I do that because it helps those die cuts to be more defined and to stand out against the background plus I don't like that white edge on the border. Now I'm going to do some recycling here. I want to use a piece of acetate for my glasses that's why I'm going to cut out a piece from this plastic packaging and I can stick it at the back of my glasses. This way they are going to have a different texture, they are going to have some shine and look more realistic. After all this is mixed media and it's always fun to use different textures on your projects. So the glasses are going on top of my little girl and you can go on and on sticking different bits and pieces to complete your page. You can never stop actually. There are so many different designs on those booklets. I'm going to use this speech bubble here that has a tiny little heart inside and I did show a heart somewhere which is here and I'm going to stick that on top. So I'm going to glue those down as well and now at this stage I'm happy with how this page looks. I'm going to bring in my white pen and I'm going to add some highlights which is a little detail that I always like to do. This time I'm using a Posca white pen and sometimes you will see me use this white pen. Some other times I may go with a gel pen. I just switch from white pen to another just to test them out and I have a bunch on my table. Now I am also going to bring in a little crown which I'm going to stick on here because why not? And then finally I'm going to stick a quote. I always like to have a lovely quote on my pages. This time I went with one that says new possibilities are waiting and they come from older sticker packs from part by Marlene. I'm just going around the quote with white pen just to help it stand out against the background and I'm going to call these pages done. Here are some close-up photos and I don't know if you can tell but I always have so much fun when I'm creating mini-art journals and I play with those booklets by Artma and Marlene love her style. It's so colorful and fun and these designs really make my day. Now let's move on to the second tag or the second page for our journal and this time I decided to color that die-cut area at the bottom. I'm using that new color by Tim Holtz. This is the Distress Paint which is actually acrylic paint and the color is Kitch Flamingo. It really matches the rest of the design so I think it's not going to show that much but I will stick other things on top as well so you will not see that seam between that paint and the collage paper. Here I'm playing with different die-cuts that can be used as borders and I will end up combining that polka dot black washi tape with one of that rainbow borders. I'm also doing a little bit of sanding and the very bottom. This is where I did cover up everything with the paint and I wanted to continue that look all the way to the bottom. After looking through the booklet I decided to go for this page with a focal point that is a hat and a bunny that is coming out of it and say something about magic. So that's why I'm using one of the Doodle Stumps that has lots of stars. I'm stamping it all over. I'm also going to add my favorite white splashes. For the white splashes here I'm using a spray bottle. This is white paint by Altenew and I absolutely love it for creating my splashes. It stays nice and vibrant. You can do a similar thing with your white gesso or your white paint. So now my focal point is going in place. It kind of is grounded by using that washi tape and the die-cut border and I'm also going to use a few stars. Again all of these die-cuts are from the same booklet. And then finally I'm going to bring in a paint marker. These are acrylic paints but in a form of a marker and I'm just going to add some paint here and there. I like how they go completely vibrant and opaque on top of my page and they provide a quick way to work with acrylic paints without having to take out your tubes, your brushes and of course to have to wash the brushes after all. So I colored in the stars yellow and I'm also adding some splashes, some yellow splashes here and there. Now here I'm using my distress paint to cover up the tub. That was an area that wasn't covered up with the collage paper and white spaces can drive me crazy so I just had to cover it up somehow. And finally I'm going to stick down the quote and here are some close-up photos on the second page. As I was creating this project I was so happy. I have been waiting for weeks for this collection to arrive at home and due to COVID things are so slow when it comes to mail. I don't know if this is the case for you as well but this is so frustrating. Anyway let's move on to the third page and this time I'm working with flowers. I have to have a flower page on a journal after all so I picked up three of them. Two of them are the same exactly the same but I'm going to stick them down on a different angle so they are not going to look identical. In a tag journal just like this one you can have elements hanging out of the page and you don't have to cut them out if you don't want to. I will since I want to have everything kind of content but you can have flowers and threads and stuff like that coming out of the page. It's completely fun. Things like that will actually turn your journal book to look more playful and it is going to give it more character. I'm using my pen, my black pen to draw the stems for all three of those flowers and I'm going to draw black and white inside those stems reflecting the border of the bigger flower so this way I have a detail on all three flowers that is identical and it's going to bring somehow all of these things together. For the white areas of the stems I'm going to go with my Posca pen again. I'm also going to use this white pen since I have it on hand to do the highlights on all the die cuts. This is a detail that I would like to do and if you noticed I didn't do anything on the background that's why I decided to work backwards this time so I did stick all the pieces on top and then I'm going to work a little bit more on the background. For that I'm going to work with one of those two stems again from the same set. Instead of using an ink pad I am using a paint pen so this is again acrylic paint in a form of a pen. I apply a little bit on the stamp and then stamp with that on top of the page. I do get a very soft impression which is exactly what I was going for. I'm also going to finish it off by stamping a few dots here and there with one of the bigger doodle stamps that are included in that stamp set. To complete my flower garden I'll also stack down a couple of leaves again from the same booklet and now I don't like how white the border is that's why again I'm going with my paint and I'm using a yellow one this time I'm going to cover it up completely and on one side I'm just going to dab a little bit of paint towards the top covering up some of the green there. This way I kind of bring those colors together and I'm going to stick the sentiment there so I'm going to kind of cover up that line. I combined two stickers for this page one that says craft to mania and the other one that says avoid stress stay home and craft. Moving on to the fourth page for today again I'm using one of the doodle stamps. This one has lots of circles here and there I'm stamping them all over the place just completely randomly here and then I decided for this one to go with the bus that is that has a big huge brass at the top. I also picked up that hot air balloon and I'm going to glue them down in such a way to combine them as if the hotter balloon is taking far up at the sky that bus. I also went through both the booklets of tie-cuts to find little clouds and some stars which I'm going to stick down as well and as I stick down the clouds I will make sure that some of them are going at the back or for the bus and some of them at the top. This way I will give the illusion that there is something going on far up at the sky. You can draw the strings connecting the balloon with the bus with a free hand for some reason I just want them to be completely straight that's why I grabbed my ruler. I chopped off the excess of that cloud but don't throw anything you can always use it on another project or at the same one just like I did here. I'm also going to stick down the stars if you want you can cut them out from the circle that they are included. I decided to use them as they are because I think they add a really fun element on my page. Again just like always I'm using my white pen and adding highlights on all the die-cuts and for my quote I went with the best time for new beginnings is now. This time I'm leaving the border at the bottom white because I think it contrasts nicely with the rest of the pages. Here are some close-up photos on the fourth page of my tag journal. When I am playing with those booklets the more I try to combine things for a page the more ideas come for other pages and it is really hard for me to stop at the amount of pages that I had committed from the beginning. So I could have kept on creating more and more and there are tons and tons of designs on these booklets. The fun part is that you get two pages so you have two identical designs to play with and here you see me playing finally on the fifth page which is the last one for today. I am using a crosshatch. Is this how you call that? Anyway a stamp from that Doodle stamp set and I decided to go with the fist but I don't want that I think he's blowing so I'm going to cut it out. I'm also going to cut out the glass. This face is supposed to be at a party. Instead of holding a glass I'm going to give him a few balloons. I am going to customize those die cuts the way I want them to work for my quote. There are die cuts that work great for nautical themed and underwater scenes so I did use those waves as well as those leaves. These could be leaves or they could be corals whatever works and I'm just taking them down there. Some of the balloons that I'm using here did have strings that I cut off so that I can draw my own. Always try to work with what you have and if something doesn't work just customize it to make it your own. And again I'm going with my good techniques adding highlights or white splashes. One tip that I can give you and you may have noticed that already is that I always pick a focal point that is a contrasting color to the background so here you can see that the face is really standing out against the blueish background as well as the balloons and this is the case with the rest of the pages. I never stick a pink focal point on top of a pink background this way it is more pleasing to the eye it stands out and it really makes a statement. Just like always the final step is to stick down the quote this time it's art is an escape from reality and I think it matches perfectly with that face who is having a party and before I say goodbye with some close-up photos let's put together that layered tag journal. I am using the rose gold rings for that and here is my finished project I had so much fun playing with the new collection by Art by Marlene and I do have scheduled more videos coming using the same collection again just like always down below in the description area you will find links to the whole collection and everything I used with a 15% off discount I hope you had fun today that you got inspired don't forget to leave me a comment to like and subscribe you haven't done so already and I'll see you next time