U for Umbel

Well it's tag time again for the swap at Chocolate Baroque; we are coming towards the end of the alphabet and these last few letters are proving to be the most difficult, particularly when it comes to working around which of their stamps (or other products) will be appropriate.  For 'U' I finally settled on UMBEL which I'm sure you know is the name for the flower head of such plants as cow parsley, Queen Ann's lace and so on.  Fortunately I have Elusive Images (now known as CB) UA4SP0176 which is a stamp set with lots of grasses and meadow plants.  The tag background was made using a technique from Tim Holtz called marbled distress - combining Picket Fence which is a white distress stain with other colours on a craft mat and 'mopping' them up - a technical term!!  Some pieces are more successful than others with this technique but most can be used so a fun thing to try.  I then stamped some of the grasses in matching distress ink and once thoroughly dry the flower was stamped with white ink and embossed using white fine detail powder.