First f all, I lucked out and found a set of "Sketchbook" tissue tapes on sale so I snapped them up (I have some on order but who knows when they will arrive and I wanted to start this tag!). Trouble is, I seem to have gotten a bad batch of tape as it wouldn't come off the roll except in tiny little strips and pieces. I used these little strips anyway (imperfection #1), but they don't really have the same impact that they would have had is they were intact (here's hoping my order has none of these faulty rolls).
I did a background using six colors (Squeezed Lemonade, Abandoned Coral, Picked Raspberry, Spiced Marmalade, Dusty Concord and Seedless Preserves)of Distress Paints and water on a small tag. I was trying to get away from my recent aquamarine fixation so I avoided blues! But... Second imperfection --- I should have chosen something other than Dusty Concord as it went all grey on me and made the background too dark.
Next was to stamp on the background and I chose a Holly Berry House stamp (116005SL, Scarab Small) for my image. Now I don't have black archival ink so I went with Color Box Black but it didn't stamp very intensely on the background (3rd imperfection), I embossed with Ranger SuperFine Detail clear embossing powder (4th imperfection - black detail would possibly have made the image stand out more) and heat embossed the scarab image.
Stencil time next - I chose THS021 (Speckles) and applied texture paste followed by detail gold embossing powder while the paste was still wet. Removed the stencil ( and gave it a good wash!) and waited for the texture paste to dry thoroughly before heat embossing. Fifth imperfection - "Speckles" has LOT of small holes )which made clean-up a bear as some of these holes were harder to clear of paste) which the embossing powder would not go through so despite my best effort, there are lots of little white dots of texture paste scattered around the pattern.
For ephemera, I really didn't have any idea-ology bits and pieces that worked for me but I did have some Making Memories Mini-Nature plaques and a ribbon slide (maker unknown) that did fit so... I smeared "Old Paper" distress Paint over both brass-colored pieces and then wiped them so the detail stood out. After the paint was dry, I used some Seedless Preserves Distress Paint to touch up the frame of the mini-nature plaque and to tint the ribbon slide. Some purple ribbons (Adhesive grosgrain from JoAnn Scrap Essentials 29562 and some organza ribbon, source unknown) to finish the tag.
So, here is March's tag, imperfections and all: