the last two.............

 The last two tags for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag challenge - I know they were not due till next month, but I still need to make my Christmas cards!
The Y is for yellow roses - not at all original, but I could find the stamp and the die, which helped! The embossed tag background used the SU Sizzix embossing folder called lacy brocade, which was inked up with summer starfruit (SU) ink before running through the big shot -funny, but having actually used this ink pad, I quite like it,  yellow is not a colour I would normally use....................which explains why this is the only yellow ink pad I own.
The rose is from the largest stamp on the  Harlequin Rose plate, stamped in black versafine ink and coloured with inktense pencils before cutting out and adding to the tag. Yellow roses were cut from yellow card using the Tim Holtz tattered florals die and the Sizzix (SU) blossom party die for the larger flower. All the flowers were heavily spritzed with glimmer mists in wheatfields and bronze.
Z is for Zoroastrian magi - the Magi are thought to have been Zoroastrian priests, who were renowned astronomers. The blue card of the tag base was stamped with the small star using a snow cap dabber, then white gel pen and finishing with a rhinestone centre. Tiny dabs of gel pen to represent other stars, then a shimmer spray finished the background. The 3 kings from an old DL Elusive Images plate were stamped 3 times on paper from the Echoes of Italy pack (had to grit my teeth a bit here and sacrifice this paper) using black versafine ink and clear EP. The various kings were then cut out and reassembled before gluing onto the tag. I did try using gilding flakes before using the paper, but the image is so finely detailed that it didn't work, and my eyesight is definitely  not up to colouring in a blank image!
Will have to post the swap tags separately when they have all arrived

xmas greetings

 I am afraid I went with the Xmas greetings for my X tag for the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap - sorry, Val, hope you don't get this one! Brain just not working with ideas for alternatives - will be interesting to see how many of us have to use Xmas! I used my current favourite distress inks again, tumbled glass and broken china, and the freebie CB snowflake from the current issue of Craft Stamper. Some of the snowflakes were embossed in glittery white EP -Wow? it's lost the

label- but they don't seem to show up on the scan, and neither does the shimmer paint in the background. I will try to get a photo tomorrow if the weather is decent..................................
The greeting was stamped in old olive SU ink and coloured with olive, pear and ruby promarkers before cutting out and mounting on foam pads.
The two tags on the left are my swaps from last month -Ursine from Joan Carnell and Village in the valley by Joyce Dixon - both lovely tags for my collection, thanks ladies!
Only Y and Z to do now - and yes, I do have ideas for these, just got to clear enough workspace to do them............................

woodland spirit woodcut tag

For once, I have got slightly ahead in the Chocolate Baroque alphatag challenge (am sure it won't last) and have done my W tag! Background was done using peeled paint distress ink and a duster brush (have to admit that this technique is much easier with the brushes) and Elaine's background leaf technique. The image of the woodland nymph is from an old Graphicus plate called earth spirit  featuring Carrie's designs - I know they are linocuts, but they could just as easily be woodcuts!
Anyhow, the image was stamped in versamark and embossed with black EP - leaves at the base of the tag cut from cored'inations card using the Tim Holtz tattered leaves die. I crumpled the leaves up, splodged with brown and green inks and finally a gold TH dabber before glueing onto the tag.

getting near the end........

 The end is almost in sight - of the Chocolate Baroque alphatag swap, that is. This month we have got to U and V - not easy, and somehow I don't think the rest of the alphabet is going to be any better.
I really will have to sort out my stamps, I know I spent longer looking for stamps that i know I have but couldn't find than actually doing the tags.........and I still haven't found that unicorn stamp! I may be stretching a point with U for uncial and uppercase - the uppercase bit is fine, just don't think the manuscript lettering is uncial, but by this point it was just too bad. Colour scheme for both tags is wild honey, tea dye, vintage photo and aged mahogany distress inks, and I tried using blending brushes to apply the ink instead of my usual cut'n'dry - it certainly goes on more smoothly, but is more difficult to work round the finer bits and takes a lot longer anyway - jury still out on these!

V is for vintage and visage - I masked the face with post-its while doing the background inking and stamping. Flowers from my box of readymade  ones, with punched leaves.
The final tags are my swaps from last month - Spooky from Margaret, (whose idea this swap was, and who has done a wonderful job organizing us all - many thanks) and Tree by Shirley

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.