July technique tags

 The theme for the Chocolate Baroque technique tag challenge for July was to use triple (tiered )stamping - pile up 3 or more pieces of card of decreasing sizes and stamp over the whole lot at one go (it does help to use repositionable glue to hold the layers together before stamping): once these are layered onto matching mats and stuck together, you get a decoupage effect, and the mats hide any missed bits of stamping. It's a simple and effective technique that I have used for cards in the past, so I rashly thought this month's tags would be a doddle.........................

it wasn't, so I will  show some of the discarded efforts as well as the final tags!
 I started by using spellbinder dies to cut out the label shape, and stamped the cottage from patchwork landscapes - so far, ok. You need to colour the layers separately, which was when I coloured some sky as trees having assumed it was a wonky bit of stamping, then I found that the next size up of the dies was way too large, and drawing round the edges of the dies I first used and cutting out the shape was way too fiddly.
Next idea was to use some Sizzix circle dies - and yes, I did check the sizes first this time! I used a stamp from the poppy meadow set of stamps, which was both large enough and easier to colour - snag this time was trying to get a poppy head in the centre of the smallest circle - these were the nearest I got, so a different die shape for the next version. This was a square label by x-cut, which also has to be handcut for the layers, but was a simpler shape to cut, it was also far easier to get the poppy in the centre of the smallest shape.
Snag this time was trying to line up the layers with the base image on the tag - after several botched versions, I had the bright idea of  stamping the base image onto a larger piece of card and cutting it to match the layers - as you can see, it didn't work very well either!
This was when I gave up on the arty versions and went for bog standard simple! Just cut 3 sizes of rectangle in white using a guillotine and 3 matching in blue slightly larger - even with measuring it was far quicker than using dies!
 I layered up one set centrally and the other to one side, stamped in chipped sapphire distress ink and coloured in with a water brush. Layered everything up onto a matching dark blue tag - just need to find a bit of ribbon now before they go in the post.
Was really glad I made an early start this time  - am usually fairly late starting - have even started on the August tags too!