I wanted to give our friend Becky a fish bowl for a “thinking of you” present, and thought a fishy gift tag would be perfect to go with it.
I used a Hero Arts Stamp set called Layered Goldfish for my images. I put Gesso on a gift tag and let it dry. I stamped “Just Keep Swimming” from the stamp set on the tag with Versafine Onyx Black ink and clear embossing powder from Ranger to heat set it.
I took a couple of stencils to create a background…I used one that looked like waves and another that looked like droplets of water so I could create colors….I put painters tape on the back of the tag and attached it to the stencil, then used a 1″ chip brush and wiped the small Distress ink cube onto the stencil, then wiped it with the brush onto the tag underneath. It helps make the brushed ink much bolder than if you just brushed with the ink on with the brush. I took the droplet stencil with a darker blue ink and brushed it through….I was trying to do things quickly so didn’t let it dry and wiped it, so wiped away a lot of my pattern….I used Tumbled Glass and brushed it over the other patterns and went around the edges with the Tumbled glass ink pad as well. I took the wave stencil and went over it again with Broken China after drying it.
I took a white card stock scrap and stamped out the goldfish with Sweet Corn ink from Gina K and a Stampin’ Up ink called Tangelo Twist. I used some alcohol markers in oranges, reds and blacks to accentuate the colors. I took a white gel pen and put lines on the fish and colored in the eye with a black Sharpie. I used foam squares to add the fish to the background and took the small circles to make bubbles above the fish with white Hero Arts Unicorn ink and added the seaweed stamped images around with Stampin’ Up Always Artichoke ink. I used the white gel pen to go over the bubbles so they showed up better.  Because the back had smudges on it, I glued another tag to it, then pulled a gold piece of ribbon through the hole to tie it to the bowl handle.

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