Alphatags Again

Yes another month has gone and it's time to show you the tags I have made for the Alphatag swap at Chocolate Baroque. The letters this month are J and K. To me they belong together so I am happy that it has worked out that they come in the same
month. The reason is that I have a sister, Kate who is only 15 months younger than me and as children we were often dressed the same and people sometimes thought that we were twins, so it always seemed right to me that the first letters of our names are next to each other in the alphabet, and our birthdates although in different months are 17 and 18 too. However that is not telling you about my tags which in fact, although I liked the letters, were quite difficult to interpret, and I think some of my fellow taggers struggled a bit this time as well.



I decided on J for Joy but, how to show it? First I looked through my Graphicus Guild start up paper pack and found this one with bright yellow butterflies fluttering all over a background with shades of yellow and purple and I thought it looked pretty joyful. I over stamped it with  some Crafty Individual sentiments with joy in them and one from Chocolate Baroque, with a brown ink and then shaded the edges of the tag with dusty concord DI. The letters are from a bag of thin plywood  ones that I got in a stationary shop I think. I gave them a coat of white gesso  and then coloured them with  the dusty concord ink, and then using the same ink stamped them with a stamp from the texture Fragments set from CB. When they were dry I triple embossed them using Versamark  ink and clear embossing powder. I glued them to the tag with Glossy Accents, and then stamped the tiny butterflies from another CB set with brown ink onto different coloured parts of background paper scraps. I glued them on with silicone glue to raise their wings slightly.




I had a look through my Chocolate Baroque stamps to find something suitable for K and found this set which I think I bought in a sale and probably haven't used before, so I decided on K for Keys. I began by colouring the tag with tea dye and vintage photo distress inks and then over stamping the background pattern with the tea dye. The lovely ornate keys and escutcheon were stamped with black soot DI and embossed with WOW ultra fine clear embossing powder. I coloured them with a mixture of distress inks, coloured pencils and a gold gel pen.I used walnut stain DI to further define the edge of the tag and then found some metal keys in my stash to hang over the keyhole.

 They have been sent off now and I am eagerly waiting for the swaps to come. This swap is such fun and it great to see what ideas everyone else comes up with each time.

Thank you to all who come to look and leave me comments, I really appreciate them all.