faux leather tags

 The March challenge for the Chocolate Baroque tag swap is to use a faux leather technique, and Margaret supplied us with instructions for two different ways.
The first tag uses a masking tape technique, where you cover a tag randomly with torn pieces of masking tape, make sure they are well stuck down , then sponge with  ink - the edges of the tape pick up more of the ink, and you end up with a patchwork effect. Once it is inked to your taste, cover the whole tag with versamark and clear emboss. This was very easy to do - I did have to buy some more masking tape, as my very elderly reel was definitely non-stick, and I got some strange looks sitting  at market ripping masking tape - and they didn't get any less strange when I had explained what I was doing!
The second technique was one I saw demoed on tv by Sheena Douglas, but hadn't got round to actually trying it, or even printing out the instructions...........this one was dead easy, and gave a great suede-like effect. Basically, you spray a sheet of card with a mix of water and glycerine, rub it in, then repeat on the other side, the crumple it all up and squeeze out any excess liquid - if your card was like mine, there won't be any. Repeat the process, then leave to dry. Once dry, cut out the tag shape, run through an embossing folder, ink as desired and decorate if wished.
I had used odd sheets of card in colours I didn't like to try this out, two being yellow and orange, which gave me the idea of trying to make flowers out of the resulting leather-look card, especially as I had used an old cuttlebug folder with a leafy branch design. I used the Tim Holtz tattered florals and tattered leaves dies, and ran the flower shapes through different folders before inking with distress inks. The one that ended up on the first tag began life as yellow, embossed with a cuttlebug flowery folder, inked with spiced marmalade and vintage photo. The second version waas orange, with a Tim Holtz music design folder,  inked with spiced marmalade and rusty hinge inks. the green leaves were left crumnpled, and inked with peeled paint  and bundled sage.

getting inky

Barbara and I spent a happy afternoon at Gissing today, getting inky with Moira and Janet, and these were the cards we made.
Moira had just received a set of the new Sheena embossing folders, and had ready embossed one on white card for us to play with.  We inked the embossed deign with distress inks, and we all ended up with very different effects, ranging from my dark one ( I do seem to be hooked on night scenes at the moment, maybe I have some vampire blood somewhere!)  to Jill's light springtime version. I lightened the sky with a waterbrush round the dragonflies, then added some wink of stella to them as well, and also to the lantern. To me, a lantern in the tree means night -time , but I did stretch a point towards a setting sun. There was  a lot of black soot sponged around the edge of the design to make it a bit more dramatic.

 Janet's card used a Clarity aperture stencil and a large stamp - a very quick card to make, fortunately as we spent so much time chatting and drinking coffee that we were running out of time!
Much to Janet's shock, I actually followed her design and colours - she's threatening to mark the date in her diary...........this was using a 7" square base card.
Mind you, I had time to stamp another image, and to revert to normal before our hall time ran out! Back to more normal, with the image stamped in black archival ink, and another sunset sky. It was cut down to fit onto a 6" square card once I got home, matted onto dark blue.