Marc Mono Mini Map

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Marc Lescarbot made a map of Canada during the late 15th century that is full of miniature depictions of plants, houses, sea monsters and ships along with land masses and shorelines.

I have an old book called The Discovery of North America that contains a copy of this map. I cut out the little ships along with the symbol that denotes the measure for distance and the map's title which was found in a strip at the bottom of the page.

The chair is from Claudine Hellmuth whose book, Collage Discovery Workshop, got me interested in paper crafting many years ago.

Other stamps used are by Inkadinkado (left side) and 7 Gypsies (right side).

I've linked it to the Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp where the theme is the letter M:

M for Marc Lescarbot

M for monochrome color scheme

M for miniature ships

M for map

all dished up on a Manila tag!

Monarch

This week's Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp is the letter M. Hopefully, the title of my blog post illuminates the connection.

I decided I must use a stamp this week since that is the store's emphasis and my link-ups tend to drift away from that more often than not.

So out came the most expensive and most frustrating stamp I own.

It was an impulse buy, designed by Lynne Perrella for Paper Artsy, and the cost made great due to shipping from England to the USA. What I failed to take into account when I chose this stamp is the large expanse of dark area and detail too fine to show up well when stamping.

It's challenging to add color and I've been most successful by stamping onto tissue paper, tinting the backside then pasting it on. I learned on this go around that my archival ink pad needs re-inking since this is a large stamp and it was difficult to get good coverage. I've also tried using detail inks and special stamping paper but seldom get a look I'm happy with. I expect I'll keep trying to master this monarch and was glad for a challenge that prompted me to revisit this love/hate relationship.

The background paper is by Bazzill and it's called Antique Script. The butterflies were cut from an out-of-print Graphic 45 release called Botanicabella. Distress inks were used and torn bits of tissue tape from Idea-ology. Now, pretend there's a hole cut in the top because I forgot to do that when I made this tag (oops).

Cabbage Salad

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I stumbled upon a person who collects images of women's fashion from the Civil War era and I've begun to follow her board. This discovery has prompted me to create collages using similar images. I hope to work out a series and this tag is my first go at it.

I'm also curious why, in many vintage photos, the subject looks so serious. Did no one say "cheese" when the photo was taken? I expect the grumpy face on this lady is why I chose to use her.

I began with a variety of papers including store-bought scrapbook paper, pages from a dictionary, a vintage cookbook and sheet music which I cut into small pieces and pasted on the tag.

After printing the lady, she was added to the tag using my image transfer technique. A homemade stencil was used to trace the outline of a frame with a fine tip marker and several areas were tinted with colored pencils to provide color and contrast. For framing, I cut thin strips from black and white striped paper and pasted them along the edges.

Why Cabbage Salad? For one thing, it's her expression and her face is rather round. And, if you look real close, you'll see that the cookbook's menu page has a listing for cabbage salad aka cole slaw.