Faux Mosaic Altered Tag

Hello Altered Artists! My name is Heidi Bound and I am an artist in New York City. I am honored to be designing for such a creative and exciting blog. I love creating altered projects, scrapbooking, card making, jewelry and mini albums. I hope you check out more of my art by going to my blog at Gotham City Stampers.

I am going to share a fun technique that was taught to me by one of my dearest friends, Pat. She calls it Faux Mosaic which is a perfect name! It also looks a bit like stained glass with some faux soldering.

To start, grab some scraps from your stash. These can be papers that match or simply "make sense" together. You will want to use some a chipboard or heavy cardstock shape for this-make sure it is something that can handle a lot of wet adhesives without curling up. I picked a chipboard tag and some red, white and blue vintage-looking scraps.

Cut the scraps into little shapes and bits-don't overthink this part of the process. Spread a thin layer of glue on your chipboard. Now, cover your chipboard with the little bits and leave a small sliver of a space between those pieces. You will need room to do your soldering in a bit. If some of your pieces hang over the chipboard, that is fine-trim those off once you have all of the pieces glued down.

Once the pieces are stuck and the glue is dry you are ready to solder your piece. I used Liquid Pearls from Ranger-they are a variety of colors and have a neat metallic look when they dry. You will want to do a line between all of your pieces and all around the outside of your tag. Liquid Pearls can be tricky to get used to at first so do some practice lines on a scrap paper until you get the feel for the product. Let those lines dry all the way before moving onto the next step.

On this tag I used Ocean Blue Liquid Pearls which really pop on the tag.

I wanted to see what a more neutral color would look like with these color scheme. On this tag I used Bisque which is a creamy light tan color.

Once the Liquid Pearls are TOTALLY dry, flood each section with Glossy Accents or Crystal Effects. There are many products that will work-just make sure it is a clear lacquer. The Glossy Accents will level out on its own but try to spread it in each section so it doesn't overflow over your Liquid Pearl lines. I use a hatpin to carefully move the lacquer where I want it to be.

You will do these in all of the sections of the tag. Glossy Accents take quite some time to dry-depending on where you live (and how humid) it may take longer. This is a perfect time to set your art aside and browse the rest of this FABulous blog!

Once your Glossy Accents is completely dry, have fun embellishing your project. You can add flowers, trims and other fun embellishments to personalize this. Tags are not the only possibility-I have made birds and butterflies using this technique and added a pin to the back for a perfect one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry. The possibilities are endless! Now...GO MAKE SOME ARE!