S and Tt tags

 It's that time of the month again when panic starts as I realise that I only have a few days left to finish (to be honest, to do) my tags for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap. I did know which stamps I was going to use, and had actually got them out, which I suppose was an improvement!
The T tag was the easiest to do, as I had an old tulip stamp, which was stamped in black versafine, clear embossed then coloured with pencils before cutting out and adding glossy accents - it took longer waiting for the glossy accents to dry than anything else. Background tag was white, sponged with DIs - mostly antique lined, with bundled sage round the edges - I do like distress inks for quick backgrounds, I find them a lot easier than the pan pastels. I coloured the tulip stamp with very elderly Whispers markers and stamped three times across the tag - I was trying to get a very faded antique look for the background, and added a loop of SU crochet trim to finish it off.
The S tag used a seahorse stamp that arrived as part of a grab bag of stamps, so would be from a much more recent stamp set. background was again DIs, starting with tumbled glass, broken china, faded jeans and ending with chipped sapphire and bundled sage.I spritzed the whole tag heavily with a mix of water and shimmer paint to try to get an underwater effect. Once it was dry, I stamped the seahorse with versamark, then stamp'n'bond powder before using gilding flakes - I couldn't decide whether to use silver or a green mix of flakes, then decided on the green as I thought that the silver might not stand out enough. I'm not sure it worked too well, but black wouldn't have looked right either....I  coloured the image with blue and green pencils
 before brushing the colours together using the shimmer ink/water mix again. The ribbons came from another grab bag ages ago.
All the shimmer made it hard to photograph, and I tried using several angles before getting a couple that looked ok - at least I did take the photos this time......

My swap tags last month came from Kath Halstead (Q for quilling) and
Mickie Sutcliffe (Rose resist)

alphatags Q and R

 The alphatag challenge on Chocolate Baroque is definitely getting harder now - not so much having the idea to go with the letters, but having stamps that fit the ideas!
I did have several options for R  and eventually decided to use this image of a roman from a very old discontinued plate - don't know which one, as I got it as part of a grab bag of stamps about 2 years ago. The small floorplan stamp in the background also came from the same grab bag. The tag was inked with distress inks after stamping the small stamp to form a background using versamark and clear EP as a resist. After the first couple of layers of ink I ironed the EP off and added more DI, but quite a bit of the resist effect still remained, rather more than I had hoped for to be truthful. The Roman was stamped and embossed in black onto white card and coloured with DI again before cutting out and adding to the tag - tag edges were distressed and inked with vintage photo and black soot.
The Q tag was far harder - I had thought of using a stamp from the peacock lady series as a queen, but ran out of time. In desperation I used the proverb stamp from one of the bird plates, embossed it in black EP, tore it out, added some quick sponging of distress inks, mounted it on a piece of paper from the echoes of italy paper pack (real desperation there, as that pad usually just gets stroked!).
Hopefully I will be more aware of the time next month - amazingly I wasn't the last to post my tags- all I need to do is find the stamps, which will involve a major clear-up operation. Not all my fault, I hasten to add - after several on-going computer problems, ending up with bits of 3 computers spread around the room, my son snapped and bought me a new computer - quite a culture shock from the rebuilt collection of hand-me-downs I am used to! - said he needed to do it to save his sanity! I do have the room to tidy up though...........which will not do wonders for my sanity..................
The last pic is of the two tags I received last month - the colour combination certainly woke me up when I opened the envelope! OMG! orange overload came from Joan Carnell and the peacock from Lavinia Tuck - 2 more gorgeous tags formy collection, thanks ladies.

alphatags O and P

 why does Blogger suddenly decide that all text has to be in blue and underlined?  It has taken me ages to get it back to normal, and I thought I was having trouble getting photos from Photobucket!!!!These are belated O and P tags for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap - I ended up doing them in such a rush that I dumped them in the post without taking any photos . Fortunately Margaret our swap organiser takes photos of all of them to add to the Ning site -only snag was she uses Photobucket, upside is that I could grab the pics from there to add here (eventually)I cheated with the owl tag - the background was a spare tag I didn't use for  N, with the owl added. Owl was stamped and embossed with detail silver EP and coloured with DIs in various blues, cut out and stuck on with glue gel.The poppy was the one I started out doing  - the poppy was stamped in versafine and coloured with pencils. then coloured over with a versamark pen and clear embossed. Post-it notes were stuck round to make a rough square shape which was sponged with DI to create a background - I used 2 greens and 2 blues, but can't remember which ones now. I just moved the postits about to make the patchwork effect, and stamped a couple of small stamps randomly into the other squares, if that makes sense. The stitches were roughly scribbled in with a fine line pen.

Have now managed to add the  previous  swap tags I received  - N for nature from Sheila and M for masquerade from Margaret - sorry, ladies, the pic doesn't do the glittery dimensional masks justice or the muted colours of the nature tag either.

just cosy...............

Just to prove I am still around, this is an earlier pic of the cat keeping  warm during our summer! She wriggled herself under the duvet so she could keep an eye on me in comfort while I was crafting.
haven't been able to do any lately, as the craft stuff had to be put away (well, sort of stacked up in heaps) to accommodate family staying to check up on OH. He is still in hospital, but the local one now, the op to remove the tumour went well, and all he really needs now is a lot of rehab physio - he fully agrees with the term physioterrorist!
Hopefully I will soon have my space back, and the time in which to play as well would be nice............

getting harder every month....

 The Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap is getting more difficult each month now - the problem is finding the stamps to match the ideas!
The L for lighthouse tag was very much an after thought - I spent ages trying to make my idea for Lace work, using the lovely new lace flower stamp, then gave up as time began to run out, and instead borrowed the lighthouse stamp from Moira (we had been using 2 other stamps from this set at craft club). Image stamped in versafine smoky grey ink, coloured with pencils and distress inks. The light effect was copied from Moira - use a brush to paint where where you want the light, then brush mica powder over it - it clings to the water and sparkles nicely!
The M for music was the easiest of the three, the music background was stamped in DI -old paper?- then more of the same colour sponged all over the tag, with a darker brown round the edges. the image was stamped once onto the tag and again onto white card, and both were coloured with pencils. The violin and some of the flowers were cut out and decoupaged over the original image, then the violin was given a coat of glossy accents. The small violin charm was  one in  a pack found when a heap of stuff collapsed and had to be tidied up.
 The N for night was also awkward - 1 spent ages fiddling around with numbers in one form or another and only succeeded in filling the bin up. in desperation I went for real simple - stamping the tree in black ink and clear embossing it before sponging various blue inks over the tag after adding a moon mask behind the tree. I also sponged the ground under the tree with black ink - the mask wasn't lined up very well, and left a little pale line, which fortunately resembled a moonshine effect - you have to be lucky some time!

 The last photo is of the lovely tags I received back last month - J for jewelled jars from Kathryn and K for Klimpt from Pat, both very glittery and opulent looking tags.
Am now waiting to see what delights turn up in the post next week!
Apologies for lack of posts recently, but OH has been in hospital, and posts - and crafting - are rather on hold until he is better.

black and yellow

 The challenge this week at Simplystampin is monochrome with a hint of colour - and that at Dynamic duos is black and daffodil delight, with optional dry embossing. I had intended to do 2 different cards, but am rapidly running out of time, (in fact, am sure that I am too late for dynamic duos already!) so one card that hopefully fits both challenges!
The black square base card is cut down from A4, and embossed along the bottom edge with a snowflake cuttlebug embossing folder, that just about shows up in the second photo.
The image from lovely as a tree was stamped in versamark and basic black ink and clear embossed. The sun was coloured with a marker pen, and the clouds sponged round the top from the cupcake punch with the basic black ink after dabbing most of it off onto scrap paper. I added shadows using

the blender pen, and also patches of sunlight on the hills with the daffodil marker. the trimmed image was matted onto a layer of daffodil delight before mounting onto the black card.
No sentiment yet, as haven't decided what to put on it!

white flower

This is the first time for ages that I have managed to take part in the Make My Monday challenge - this month the theme is florals, and this week they wanted lily of the valley or white flowers.
I don't have any lily of the valley stamps, but I do have this lovely lace flower from the new Chocolate Baroque lace fragments stamp set that I was itching to try out!
I also wanted to try the faux patina technique from Splitcoast Stampers, so got inky fingers and put them both together.
The flower was stamped in versamark and embossed in detail white onto SU crumb cake card, roughly torn out round the image and the edges inked with vintage photo DI - and I carefully added a very little ink onto the centre of the flower using a cotton bud.
The faux patina background starts out with an embossing folder - I tried several, and the ones that worked best were the cuttlebug harlequin pattern I used here and the SU vintage wallpaper, which both have smallish overall patterns that are fairly deeply embossed. The folder was inked with SU crumbcake ink before embossing, so you have an embossed white image on a pale background - I embossed twice to get a large enough piece of card. The card was then inked all over with distress inks, starting with tumbled glass and peeled paint, ending with vintage photo. After a few hours drying on a storage heater, I dabbed a versamark pad over the card, and embossed with detail gold EP - the random effect does mean that the background got a bit inked too, but it looked ok.
I used a white 5"x7" card blank, with a mat of SU chocolate chip card under the embossed panel.