Crate Paper Journey :: Minimal Tea Tags

This simple, not-so-layered post from CP Gal, Rebecca Luminarias, brings together two wonderfully playful worlds–Tags & Crate Paper's "Journey" collection. There are some soft pretty glassine bags to peek at too!

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Simple doesn't have to mean boring. I've always loved the layered look but there are times when I find myself moving in a more minimal direction--simplifying things a little bit. So many embellishments can stand out on their own if given the chance. At the very least they need only one or two other pieces to compliment them. That's the focus of my project today--simple tea tags.

I like this idea of creating a larger tag and anchoring it to a smaller one, in essence, making a tea tag. I've carried the sparse feel over to this set by choosing some statement pieces from the Journey collection. I started with a basic, store-bought white tag, added a layer for texture and finished it off with the focal point--in this case the glittered F-U-N alphas.

The second part of the tag is cut from the 'Let's Go' accent cards patterned paper. I stitched a die cut arrow to it and then tied the tags together. So simple and easy but not boring (at least I don't think so!).

Lace is one of my most favorite textures to use in paper crafting. In a photo, you almost feel like you can touch it which adds to the sensory element of the project. The glitter vellum arrow on the smaller tag invokes the same feeling. I've made no secret of my excitement in the growing number of textures in recent Crate collections, and that's one reason why. Different finishes lend an extra element of interest.

When I'm creating I often find myself saying the word unnecessary in my head. Take this tag for example. The larger tag simply has a gold foil printed acetate card that has been stitched to it. I really liked the way that looked, uncluttered and minimal. A part of me felt obligated to add more to the tag, for some reason, but I didn't want to stick something on there just for the sake of using more embellishments. So I dared to leave it be, allowing it to make a statement all on it's own--'take the scenic route'. And I'm glad I did.

Let me say that just because this is a minimal project, that doesn't mean that it's any easier than it's layered, clustered, piled on counterparts. It still takes me a lot of playing around--positioning, repositioning, adding, subtracting--to achieve the right balance. I'm not much of a sit-down-get-it-done-in-thirty-minutes kind of crafter. I fuss quite a bit, even on projects that have very few embellishments. But that's all part of the fun, right?