Alphatags O and P

Time once again to show you my tags for the Chocolate Baroque Alphatag swap. The letters O and P were much easier for me this month as I am a literal thinker rather than a lateral one so I like doing the letters that easily lead the thoughts to a specific subject.


O is for Owl


It wasn't hard for me to choose owl because it gave me the chance to use this lovely Crafty Individuals stamp. I stamped him twice with black ink and coloured one image with coloursoft pencils and cut out the owl and his perch. The other one was coloured around the owl with distress inks, in antique linen and various browns, I'm not certain which ones now.The backing paper I found  in the bottom of one of my odds and ends boxes while looking for something else, and is the result of a long ago play session with some Starburst Stains. I don't think the shimmer shows on this photo but it is a coppery brown colour and had a textured look to it that I believe I had made with cling film. As soon as it caught my eye I thought tree trunk, perfect background for my owl.I cut a piece of this paper to make the tag and used a Tim Holtz wood grain embossing folder to add more texture.The leaves were cut from some patterned paper with a Sissix die and then I used some rub on coppery gold to enhance some of the leaves and fixed them to the tag with a large brad. Unfortunately I made a proper bish of it and had to start again which is why this one has a narrow border of card showing as my nice shimmery background paper wasn't quite big enough to cut another tag. The owl image was fixed to the tag with DS tape, the word owl was cut out from the second image and mounted to match the tag and fixed in place with foam pads. The coloured owl was mounted over the image with silicon glue and I also added some glue under some of the leaves to secure them.

P is for Poppy


Poppy wasn't first on my mind for P, but just when I was deciding, Chocolate Baroque released this lovely set of stamps called Pretty Poppies. My regular readers will know that I was singing the praises of this stamp set in my last post.
This is is the other main image in the set, there is also another flower stamp and some sentiments too. Anyway this time I decided to colour them differently and chose this mauve because every year I have lots of poppies this colour growing in my garden. They are only annual plants but I love them so much and they produce so many seeds that I just sprinkle them around all over the place, so that there will be plenty the following year. These were stamped with Memento black ink onto the tag and coloured with Distress Markers and a waterbrush. I then stamped again onto thin copy paper and cut out to make a mask to cover the poppies while I stamped my favourite Crafty Individual crackle background stamp randomly all over the tag with antique linen Distress ink.The shading round the edge was done with dusty concord. The letters were cut from mauve pearlised card using x-cut dies.
Now I am waiting to see what the postman delivers at the end of the month when the tags are swapped and sent out. You can see collage photos of all the tags so far here.

I am going to enter the poppy one at Penny Black and More @ Allsorts; Summer Blooms,
and at Make It Monday; anything Goes.

Thank you to every one who takes the time look and for your lovely comments.

Sweet Summer Poppy

This lovely stamp is from one of the latest sets from Chocolate Baroque called Pretty Poppies which was simply tagged  "must have!!" as soon as I saw it. I love poppies of all sorts and colours although the red ones are my favourite so when I saw these I ordered them straight away and thanks to CBs  super fast service they arrived in time to make this card for my friends birthday. I started by stamping the image three times onto ivory card and once onto thin copy paper. I coloured one image completely with coloursoft pencils and then the two flower heads and butterfly on  another and just the front flower head on the last one. Next I cut out the image stamped on paper to make a mask to cover the poppy and stamped Crafty Individuals crackle background with Antique Linen DI. The two part coloured images were then cut out and layered on top with silicon glue to add some dimension. I cut a mount from gold mirri card and used a Memory box bistro label die to cut a gold label to carry the greeting. The red panel was cut to fit a square card leaving a border all round and then I used a Fiskars edge punch to decorate the left hand side. when all the layers had been stuck down I tied an ivory ribbon around and stamped the greeting on an offcut of background stamped card and cut it to fit the bistro label adding red brads for decoration in the holes and fixed it to the card using foam pads.

I am adding a couple of close ups to show the layers on the flowers. I didn't want to make it too chunky but just add a little dimension.

 I am going to enter this for The Stamp Man fortnightly Challenge,Anything Goes/ Summer Colours, and Make It Monday, Always Anything Goes.

Taste of the Orient

The challenge at Fashionable Stamping Challenges at the moment is Oriental and as I haven't made anything
Oriental for a long while I decided to dig out some stamps and see what I could do. The image of the Japanese ladies is a wood mounted stamp by Just For Fun, which I stamped with black Archival ink and cut out close to the image and mounted onto gold mirri card. I covered the front of a square card with a piece of oriental style paper. I stamped the Acer branch  (Lavinia Stamps) with Versamark ink onto black card and embossed with clear EP. I cut a panel from this and stuck it to the right side of the card overlapping the patterned paper and inserting a strip of gold card to leave a thin border between.Next I stamped the Acer again onto red card and embossed with gold EP.  I cut this to fit across the card and again mounted it onto gold mirri card. I fixed the main image to this panel and added the little fan charm which was silver, so I used gold EP to make it the right colour, and tied some red and gold embroidery threads to make a tassel.The greeting was printed on the computer using an oriental style font.
I am also entering this at Make It Monday where as always Anything Goes.
Thank you to everyone who stops here to take a look and for all your encouraging comments.

Butterfly Wishes

It has been raining here all day and has been very grey and dismal looking, at not at all summery for the start of July. So I thought I would show you this card that I made for one of my sisters whose birthday was last week.It makes me wonder where the real butterflies go to keep their wings dry when it keeps raining so much.These two beauties are Chocolate Baroque stamps from a set called Patchwork Butterfly.I stamped them onto white card with Memento tuxedo black ink and coloured them with Coloursoft pencils, and then cut them out.The background paper is one that made some time ago with fresh flowers from the garden. I showed how in an earlier post here. I trimmed one edge with a scalloped cutter and mounted it onto some mauve card which I then fixed to a white square card. Next I stamped the butterflies again right onto the card and placed the coloured ones over them with thin foam pads.The greeting was stamped onto a scrap of the background paper and mounted to match, and I finished off with an organza ribbon.

I have added these close ups to show the colouring.
I am entering this at Make It Monday,    Always Anything Goes, and at
Dream Valley Challenges,  Anything With Wings.

Thank you for stopping by to look and for your comments they are really appreciated.