Uniformity

  

Inspired by a quote, this tag was made with a fussy-cut vintage image pasted on a scrap of Paper Stash tinted with inks and colored pencils; the text is from a typewriter.

The "B" on their uniforms--pure coincidence ☺.

True Love

A week away from Valentine's Day and a milestone wedding anniversary for yours truly, doesn't mean big preparations are underway at my house (just having each other is more than enough) but it does signal the sharing of a card made for the occasion.

This one embraces a mixed media feel starting with a book page tinted with Distress ink and white-washed a bit. The heart was cut from a business envelope and I originally planned to use the other side. But after tinting, I liked the back better and made the printing part of the design (even though it's slightly askew).

I stamped the words "Special Delivery" (Tim Holtz Correspondence) and "True Love" is an older Remnant Rub.

The flowers and postage stamp were fussy-cut from Authentique scrapbook paper after using a bit of water and my fingers to rub off the backside to make the paper thinner (easier to cut and pastes down nice and flat). I always encase delicate pieces like this with clear medium to protect them for handling.

I darkened the border with more Distress and drew lines with a fine-tip marker. I was lucky to have a piece of paper that matched my heart to frame it with. It's "dollar-store" variety children's construction paper, it's super thin (which for me is an asset) and I use this stuff all the time--it's perfect for collage.

Finally, it was mounted on black card stock and I'll insert a lighter page on the inside for personalizing.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday challenge this week, the theme is Love and/or Hearts.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Truth Teller

  

A book I'm reading inspired this tag collaged with a fussy-cut vintage image and scraps of Tim Holtz paper.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday challenge, this week's theme is "Let's be on Time."

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Inaugurata

 

Here's a tag collaged with fussy-cut scraps of Tim Holtz paper stash and also some of his stamps along with a vintage photo to commemorate the day.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

-- George Orwell, 1984

Merry and Bright

 

 

• Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it white. -Bing Crosby
• Remember this December, that love weighs more than gold! -Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
  
• There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. -Erma Bombeck
  
• Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more! -Dr. Seuss
• Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone. -Charles M. Schultz
• When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things--not the great occasions--give off the greatest glow of happiness. -Bob Hope
• Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall. -Larry Wilde

Wherever you are, whatever you are facing, whatever your challenges or opportunities may be…may your days of Christmas be merry and bright.

Girlfriend

I would say my greeting cards look a lot like the tags I make, or a journal page, for that matter. Here I have assembled one using a hand-cut botanical print, a Found Relative and some Collage Paper (Tim Holtz) onto a book page stamped with a French postage mark. I machine-stitched a border and embellished it with 3D paint (Liquid Pearls).

Everything was tinted with Distress inks and I used a watered-down layer of off-white paint over the girls dresses to change their appearance.

I think a key element in this composition is the addition of dark shading behind the girls which gives it some dimension. And it was mounted onto a kraft paper card base which reinforces the vintage vibe.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Patience

I made a background by stamping (Tim Holtz Ledger Script) on a manila tag with black Archival ink then used several blue and green Distress inks to give it some color.

I transferred this image over the colored text background using gel medium. Because of the transparent nature of image transfers, the background would have been visible underneath the white areas of the image.  To solve this problem I printed a second copy of the image, fussy-cut just the girl and pasted her over the top of the first image layer. She was tinted with more inks and a text label was made with my typewriter.

I'm linking up with Simon's Monday challenge to Make Your Own Background.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Neighbors

Fortunately, during this pandemic and the stay at home orders, the weather here is suitable for walking outdoors and my neighbors are taking advantage of it.

As I gaze out my window, I am seeing many of them for the very first time!

The "neighborly" text sticker (Tim Holtz) seemed right for this tag made with a printed vintage photo that was cut-out and pasted over succulent plants cut from scrapbook paper (Kaisercraft).

I'm linking this up with Simon's Monday challenge blog because many succulent plants start with the name Echeveria and this week's theme is the letter E.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Everything is Possible

Simon's Monday challenge blog features Stamperia this week and the theme is texture.

I have altered a page from Stamperia's Oriental Garden as the background for this tag by darkening the edge around the moon with colored pencils and inks. I used a dark marker to strengthen the color of the branches and other lines. Not much, you understand, but just enough to create more contrast.

The birds were stamped onto thin pink paper then cut-out and pasted to the tag. I like this bird stamp set but it wasn't made properly (trimmed). The rubber edges always print no matter how careful I am so I'm forced to make a cut-out. No big deal.

I created texture by covering the flower blossoms with Glossy Accents and used a Tim Holtz stencil called Dot Fade with white texture paste. I find this stencil so useful for adding random bits and use it very often.

The text was typed onto the back of thin scrap paper with my 1970's-era electric typewriter. While you can't really see it here, the center of the O's are missing. Because age has hardened the machine's rubber platen, when I use thin paper the striker cuts right through it.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

Tell Your Story

I've got this thing about seeing sky inside a frame so I played around with the idea this week and I'm linking this tag to Simon's Monday challenge, "Frame It."

The girl is a Baseboard Doll (Tim Holtz) that I stripped from her backing and you may have guessed that's a flower cut from the Wallflower paper stash.

The frame is a tiny die cut from Stampendous that I crackled with medium, the text is a Remnant Rub and I used Ranger's Liquid Pearls on the inside edge of the frame.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care.

She Loved Them All

Just four days away from Valentine's Day (and my wedding anniversary) and I still need to make cards for my hubby and my good friend (and fellow card maker) Thelma.

I guess I was warming up by making this tag and so I thought I'd share it with you today.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care. 

A Glimpse of Heaven

glimpse /ɡlim(p)s/  -  (noun)  a momentary or partial view

I'm drawn to vintage portraits with unusual or intense expressions. This image is a good example of what I mean and it's what prompted me to use it.

After some fussy-cutting and sanding, it was pasted to a tag covered with an old German bible page partially tinted with gesso, inks and colored pencils.

The flowers were cut from scrapbook papers and the text is a Clippings Sticker (Tim Holtz). I use these stickers a lot, their curation is very good and always seem to prompt a creative angle/story I might not have considered.

I stamped the symbol in the sky with grey archival ink and enhanced the values with a black fine-line pen.

I'm linking to the "Flower Frenzy" challenge on Simon's Monday blog.

As always, I hope this post finds you well and happy and I appreciate your visit.

Until next time, take care. 

12 Tags for Christmas 2019 - Christmastide

We've had a really rainy weekend here in the desert which made for a good time to get cozy in the craft room and make another Christmas tag.

I was channeling a vintage vibe with this one and used a page from an old German bible along with some fussy-cut paper from Graphic 45.

It was embellished with glitter glue, Glossy Accents and machine stitching and I used my typewriter for the text. I needed something to fill-in the bottom area and used a Stamp Collector stamp (Tim Holtz).

There's time to link yet again to Simon's Monday challenge for this week's "Let's Sparkle" theme.

12 Tags for Christmas 2019 - Father Christmas

My first Christmas tag of the year features a vintage image of Santa mounted on kraft card stock and embossed with gold polka dots.

This close-up shows the glitter I applied on the banner, around the oval and on the tree branches.

I'm linking this post to Simon this week because the theme is "Recycle" and I've included some photos to explain.

The tag was made from the back of an empty drawing paper pad (I save all quality cardboard just for this purpose).

I pasted my laser-printed image onto some packaging material before cutting it out. The material had a slick surface so to make sure I got a good bond using my glue stick, I sanded the surface before applying the image.

And finally, I like to use scraps of craft foam sheets when I want to lift an image from the surface to create some dimension. I just cut it to size and use some glue.

Look for more Christmas tags in the days and weeks to come (it's only 34 days away) and if you'd like to see more tags from previous years, here's a link.

In Someone's Dream

Sometimes, I like to break the rules and venture away from the mainstream. This unconventional collaged tag represents an art format that really appeals to me.

I have a tin box that contains bits and pieces of hand-cut ephemera prepared for various projects but never used. Today I dug in and pulled out a few pieces and turned them into this tag.

I'm linking to Simon's Monday challenge, Thinking of You, because clearly these ladies are pondering something.

Purple Martin

Autumn is Simon's Monday challenge this week and was the inspiration for this greeting card. I dug out an older (but favorite) paper stash by Tim Holtz called Wallflower and the bird (a Purple Martin), leaves and feathers were cut from it.

The background paper is this year's Halloween release from Tim called Abandoned. Run, don't walk to purchase (before it's all gone) if you like dark-colored, jewel-toned distress-looking paper.

I couldn't resist adding the book text. It accidentally showed up on my desk while working and it just seemed like karma to add it. I expect to use the card as a kind of "get well" greeting to provide words of encouragement.

The border was made with Copper Scribbles and Olive Branch Nuvo Crystal Drops.

To prevent warping, I pasted the various cut-out bits using tiny drops of a quick dry adhesive only where needed (on the floppy bits, etc.).

I also tinted the leaves ever so lightly with colored pencils and a bit of ink to alter their original neutral appearance.

Happy Birthday Thelma

Thelma (my good friend who got me started stamping) has a BIG milestone birthday coming up and this is the card I made for her.

Nothing ground-breaking to talk about technique-wise but I would like to mention the flower garland because it was hand-drawn by me after a few simple lessons from the queen of coloring books--Johanna Basford. She has a new book coming out this month that teaches her drawing methods.

I gave the garland some color with my Polychromos then cut it out and pasted it onto scrapbook paper.

The cardstock I mounted it on couldn't be a standard card size so I found some really great instructions here for how to make an envelope in ONE MINUTE. Really!

Then I decorated the envelope using inspiration from Kristina Werner and realize I need more interesting postage stamps for the next time I do this. (No pics for privacy reasons.)

I wonder if the post office would mind if I used a real stamp along with some fake ones like these? I'll have to try it and then let you know.

Fortune Cookies

What have I been up to lately? Making Asian-inspired paper-folded Christmas box ornaments that can hold a treat--of course!

It was the project idea I came up with after being invited to a guest spot on the The Funky Junkie Boutique blog. The challenge is "Treats Not Tricks" and here's the description:

• Choose a theme and make something that will hold a treat for someone.  It could be a Halloween treat bag, a Valentine's candy box, a birthday card for a special person that holds a treat (could be a gift card "treat" or a bite of chocolate), anything that can hold a treat.

To make my box ornaments, I found some patterns here and used the Oriental Garden paper collection by Stamperia and lots of different glitter glues for decoration.

I used tracing paper and a scoring tool to transfer the patterns and quick-dry adhesive to hold them together after folding.

They looked rather plain in the beginning, but the real fun comes when you get out the glitter glue to decorate them. Nothing says Christmas like a little bling ☺!

Ornaments before decorating - click to enlarge

For gift-giving, I can tuck a treat inside or perhaps a note with a special wish or promise (kind of like a fortune cookie). Here are a couple examples of how the boxes open.

I look forward to seeing everyone's projects and encourage you enter the challenge--you might win a guest spot like I did and it's been a lot a fun. Thanks for stopping by!

Summer

I'm celebrating summer with this project, prompted by two blog challenges: Simon's Midsummer Blues and Frilly Funkie Junkie's Let's Do It Again. The blue part is self-explanatory and doing it again meant revisiting an old project and creating a remake.

You may know that I do love fussy-cutting and especially the flowers from the Tim Holtz Wallflower paper stash. So that, along with a Baseboard Doll and Lace Baseboard Frame, was what I used to assemble this project.

It was mounted inside the back of a wooden panel that I covered with paper. The doll's left arm was originally bent up high and was altered by slicing and dicing and piecing together some baseboard from another doll.

Here's the original project that inspired the "do-over." It is a Configurations Box I made for CHA 2015. Paper dolls hadn't been invented yet so I cut the girls from a Found Relative photo. It was the year the Wallflower paper stash came out and I assembled a garden for them to sit in.

So, it is still mid-summer here in the desert and we'll have at least two and a half more months of high temps. There hasn't been any monsoons that bring rain so the dry spell weather-wise coincides with my own personal artistic dry spell and lack of posts. I'm thankful for the prompts this week and it feels so good to be working again!

Update: So proud this post became a Top Pick on the TFJB blog--thank you!

A Fortunate Find

I fussed with a tag over the weekend by altering a photo of a vintage road sign. I knew it needed something else and this morning's announcement of the stencil theme at Simon's Monday challenge gave me the ah-hah moment I needed.

I used the Tim Holtz dot fade stencil in the background but instead of dabbing ink through the holes, I swiped my ink pad over the entire surface of the stencil and then pressed it on to the tag.