Crackle background tags

I created these tags for a swap on AFTCM which required that crackle be used somewhere in the creation of them.  I have had a bottle of crackle medium in my stash for years and had yet to actually use it so I dug it out and got started!!  I created several pieces of background paper in my attempts and had only one really crackle.  Needless to say there has to be some conditions that I did not fully appreciate from reading the instructions on the bottle.  So be it!  I got enough to create backgrounds for my tags and the other sheets will be used for other projects.  You can find a couple of cards created with these backgrounds here and here.
I used brown cardstock for the backgrounds, painted on the crackle paint and then added teal, blue and coral acrylic paint over the top.   The one that crackled the best had all the colours so I decided to use brown cardstock for my tags to highlight the crackled areas.  I cut the tags 2.5" x 5.5" and trimmed diagonal corners on one of them.
For the left hand tag I cut the crackle background paper to be just a bit smaller, glued on some brown circle punchies and punched a hole through everything. I found some (TH) bird and bird cage chip board die cuts in my stash which I embellished.  I trimmed the bird cage to fit on the card, colour washed it with black watercolour and added a black cotton hanger.  The bird I embellished with sheet music, added a brad for the eye and watercoloured it in blues and browns.  It needed a bit more "somethin" so I added this corrugated card board die cut flower which I embellished with watercolour and some punchies from my stash.  After I glued all the elements to my tag I added the LIFE sticker, a green leaf to the bottom edge of the flower and brown seam binding to the top hole.  Done and really like the final result!!
The second tag is going to the same swap partner so I wanted it to be really different.  I perused my coloured image stash and found this one that matched the teal in the background paper perfectly.  I die cut it with an oval Nestie (NB) and backed it with one in orange just a bit larger - that really framed the image nicely and set it off from the background.  Now, the background needed a bit of something so I embossed some swirls in two corners using copper embossing powder.   I punched the words, watercoloured them and layered them with a punchie before adding it to the tag using 3D foam tape.  To finish it off I added a slot at the top and inserted some brown seam binding.  Happy with this one too!!
They are off to my partner in Monday's mail.

Therese