La Cucina

(Per Schiassi e Scarpelli)

My cooking skills have improved with practice over the years but in the early days of my marriage I felt like a child in the kitchen. My husband is Italian and no one cooks like his Mama!

The stamp used for this tag was found at a garage sale and seems very old (I think it may date back to the 1970's) and while I wasn't sure I'd ever use it, I was drawn to the image (perhaps because of my history?) and the price was right so I bought it.

With this week's theme of Food and/or Drink at Simon's Monday blog challenge I thought now would be a great time to use it.

I began with a page from an old cookbook which is now hard to see due to the many layers of distressing I used to make the walls look like old plaster. The floor, window and sign were hand-drawn, the bird was stamped and I placed a bit of washi along the sides of the window for trim.

Buon appetito!

Hold On

At the bottom center of this photo are the words "Bird's Nest" (click to enlarge) and it was pure coincidence. The star, cut from the index pages of a very, very old cookbook was made before I even thought of using a bird (Thrift-shop Ephemera) to carry it and even then, I didn't make the connection until it was pasted down.

The stamped background was made using Tim's Dots & Floral stamp set with red and grey archival ink then tinted with colored pencils after applying a light white wash. A bit of machine stitching, gelly roll dots, Chit-Chat stickers and washi were used to complete it.

I'm linking to this week's Monday blog challenge at Simon where, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, the prompt is Use Some Lucky Stars.

Dreamer

This tag began as a happy accident. I received a new stencil (Tim's Blossom) and it was tossed on my tabletop. Later, I noticed that an unused cut-out of this lady had landed on top. Somehow, they seemed to go together and so I ran with it.

I used paint to stamp tiny text over a tinted background then applied blue, grays and greens through the stencil. The lady was put into place and I stamped then overpainted a few birds (Tim's Birds on a Wire). A few of his Big Chit-Chat stickers seemed right to explain the scene.

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