Ranger Designer Challenge 2017

I am back from Arizona, Creativation and a little holiday; ready to share my Challenge Tag. Firstly, I was over-the-moon thrilled and honoured to be a part of the Ranger Designer’s Challenge at this year’s Creativation (CHA) – huge thank yous to Tim and Ranger! The new Etcetera giant tags, that Tim has designed and Stamper Anonymous are making, are an amazing paper surface (I have each of the three sizes on order and can’t wait for them to arrive).  I was shocked at how much work it was to drill the holes for my bolts (this is after all paper, right?!).  My assigned product for the challenge was Distress Stain and I wanted to showcase it in on a couple different surfaces in some of my favourite ways.  

Ranger Designer Challenge 2017

Yield:  1 #Large Etcetera Tag

Wet Ingredients:

• Ink – Alcohol Mushroom; Archival Black Soot, Distress Walnut Stain
• Other – Collage Medium (matte), Texture Paste, Distress Crayon Frayed Burlap, Walnut Stain
• Paint – Distress Old Paper, Tumbled Glass, Twisted Citron, Walnut Stain
• Spray Stain – Distress Old Paper
• Stain – Distress Brushed Corduroy, Faded Jeans, Fossilized Amber, Frayed Burlap, Tumbled Glass, Old Paper, Twisted Citron, Walnut Stain

Dry Ingredients:

• Thickboard Etcetera Tag
• Other – Acrylic Sheet, Brass Hardware (bolts, nuts, washers and wingnuts), Masking Sheets, Textile Surfaces (linen), Watercolour Paper

Tools/Equipment:

• Dies – Stencil Numbers
• Stamps – Dapper, Graph
• Stencils – Arrow, Chevron, Industrial, Stars

Large pools of various colours of Distress Stains were applied to 2 overlapping craft mats; using piece of watercolour paper cut slightly larger than the tag (at just over 8 X 14” this is the largest technique based background I have attempted to date) using Tim’s Marble Stains technique as a first and second layer and then Stamping with Stains in Walnut Stain (both of these techniques are from Creative Chemistry 101).  I created a large sticky-backed numeral stencil (based on the smaller number stencil I made from the Stencilled Numbers Thinlits and masking sheet for one of the ‘badges’), and flooded it with various layers and colours of Distress Stain.  Then watercolour paper was mounted to the Thickboard Tag with Collage Medium and the edges torn to size and shape; from the remnants a scrap piece was used to cover the re-enforcer.  The edges of everything were finished with Walnut Stain Distress Ink (shocking – I know!) and “REPAIRS RECEIVE CONSTANT ATTENTION.” stamped in archival Black Soot.

Next, texture paste was applied though selected sections of stencils to linen textile surface, once dry the edges were stitched with heavy frames around each of the pieces (I liken them to badges) and Distress Stain applied to each; some were directly dabbed from the bottles, others dripped from pipettes and all were reacted with water while drying and once dried. Various areas were colourized with Distress Crayons to highlight the textured elements.

The brass hardware was painted with layers of distress paint, rubbed with steel wool and aged with mushroom Alcohol Ink. The large acrylic cog and cod pieces were cut, from drawings I made, on an industrial laser cutting machine (Jaeger has one of these at work and was kind enough to cut them for me).  The bolts were placed though predrilled holes, nut were used as spacers to float the cog pieces and secured with washers and wing nuts.