technique tags- relief stamping

This year we have a new swap theme at Chocolate Baroque - back to tags, with a different technique featured each month. Relief stamping is the first theme, and I thought it would be a doddle - I remembered doing this many years ago, using versamark as a resist on glossy card, and  it always seemed to work fine................sadly, it didn't this year! I rapidly cam to the conclusion that the glossy card I had was definitely not the same, as the inks wiped off almost completely, leaving a VERY faint watermark image behind.
So I had to resort to the second way of doing this - versamark again, but clear embossing before adding the ink. I ended up with quite a collection of tags, and these two are the ones that are going in the post tomorrow. I cheated and scanned them together, apologies to anyone who wants to check up close for the mistakes!
Top tag uses my current favourite stamp set, tranquillity - well, it is my newest one!- and I stretched the relief theme a bit here. I stamped the buddha image using black versafine ink, then coloured it with promarkers. I then stamped the iris image using versamark, and went over the buddha with a versamark pen before dunking the whole tag in clear embossing powder and heating it. I then added the background using distress inks and brushes, and the wisteria stamp along the top in 3 different greens.
The second tag uses a very old  Elusive Images stamp of the lady together with an appropriate quote from artistic affirmations. I used the relief technique for the words, stamped the lady using baked brown sugar ink
 from Stampin up, then sponged the background with distress inks in scattered straw, tea dye, vintage photo  and black soot.
 It will be very interesting to see what everyone else comes up with ! Next month is crackle, which I haven't tried before.......................