~Tuesday's Tips & Techniques: Distressed Tags~

I love tags! They are so easy to make, so easy to embellish and they work just perfectly for journaling and titles. I often take a tag and use ink to distress it a bit. It is super quick and easy. Here is how I do my basic tag distressing.

Supplies:
Tags, or cardstock cut into a tag shape
Distress Ink
Blending tool, or wad of paper towel :)
Craft mat, or wax paper

I load my blending tool with ink and pounce it right onto my craft mat. Nope, not right onto the tag, right onto the mat. It's kinda hard to see but maybe you can make out the ink on my craft mat.

Then I pull the ink off the mat and onto my tag with circlular motion, drawing it off the mat bit by bit. This takes only a light touch. This technique makes the ink blend smoothly onto the tag and then the shape of the blender doesn't show.

I usually use at least two different colors of ink to give my tag dimension. This ink color shows up a bit better on my craft mat, can you see it there now?

Now, pull the second ink from the craft mat onto your tag. Remember to use a circular motion with a little upturn at the end, almost like you are sweeping crumbs off the kitchen table.

Once the tag is distressed, you can embellish to match your layout. I've used a Tim Holtz stamp set on this one.

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Now, here is the technique for those of you without the blending tool. Whip out a paper towel and crunch it up into a ball. Done, there, that's a great ink blending tool! Use the same pounce and pull motion to load your paper towel with ink, pounce it onto your mat and pull it onto your tag.

Happy Distressing!