I've recently fallen in love with Caran D'ache neocolour crayons. I like them because they come in some really great colours and they seem to create a very pigmented watercolour (if you so choose) rather than the usually pale watercolour effect that I was getting from my paint palette watercolours. They also seem to provide more pigment than my Gelatos do.

I recently bought some tag dies from Studio Calico and wanted to use my watercolours and some other supplies I had on hand to make some gift tags. Here are the supplies I used (plus the Neocolors pictured above and a watercolour pen):

"Hustle" pencil was a gift from Studio Calico with my last order, gold letter stickers were found in someone's office at an estate sale, Tag dies are from Studio calico and the vellum Sticky Tag Notes are from Dollarama.

I used the largest of the dies to cut the tags first, before watercolouring, because I wanted to control where the watercolour was being placed on the tag, although I think it would also be nice to use the dies on a previously watercoloured page. You'd probably end up with some nice random designs.

I rubbed my Neocolors on paper, rubbed my watercolour pen in the pigment, and then squeezed my pen and dripped the colour onto the tags, moving it around as I saw fit. A donkey appeared on one of the tags right before my very eyes. It was the strangest thing. I can't say I was displeased about it though. Magic donkeys are welcome in my crafting area any day!

I created a "scribbled" effect by using the crayons directly on the tags after I dripped the watercolours on them. I just lightly scribbled a bit as you can see on this tag:

After the tags were dry, I took some vellum labels that I bought at the dollar store and stuck them onto a piece of cardstock which I then ran through my typewriter to create some greetings/sayings for the tags.

The Magic Donkey will wish someone a Happy Birthday!

I also used some very old gold letter stickers that I found in someone's office at an estate sale to pretty up the tags. I had to really fight with those letter stickers. Picking them off their sheet was not the highlight of my day. I think crafting supplies have come a long way in recent years. ;)

I think I'm going to be getting a lot of use out of those tag dies!