Not A Card

To day instead of a card I am showing you the tags I've just made for the tag swap on the Chocolate Baroque community site. We make two tags each month and send them to our organiser, Margaret who swaps and posts them. So each month in the mail we receive tags back from two different talented crafters. This year the swaps are titled Technique Tags, and Margaret has provided us with the techniques. This month it was cracked ice technique. This involves stamping and colouring an image onto card and then embossing it with several layers of  clear embossing powder and then putting it in the freezer for a few minutes.Then take out again and bend it to make the cracks.You the rub brown ink into the cracks to add an aged look. I got the cracks done ok but I don't think the ink bit worked quite so well, although it did get into some of the cracks. We have a choice to make whether to make two the same or different, and as you can see I opted for doing them the same this time. As I have mentioned before most of my projects start with a stamped image which is why I have put this photo first. The stamp I used is Chocolate Baroque from a set called Romantica, stamped with Memento Elderberry ink. I inked the background lightly with antique linen and victorian velvet DI and darkened the edge with pickled preserves, and then cut it out. After the embossing and cracking I mounted it onto mauve pearl card.

Having made the toppers I set about preparing the tags.They are cut from ivory card using the Tim Holtz tag die. I coloured them by dabbing the same DI colours as before plus a little aged mahogany onto my craft mat and spritzing with water and dabbing  the tags into it. I added a little extra DI shading round the edges. Next I added some over stamping using CB stamps and pickled preserves ink. Lastly I added a few stars with white paint through a Memory Box stencil.The tags still look a bit buckled in this photo from all wetting and drying processes, but I flattened them out later.

So here are the finished tags, the Celebrate stamp is an old wood mounted one, I couldn't find a name. I stamped it onto vellum and used a tearing ruler to tear it into a narrow strip to wrap around the lower part of the tag, and then added purple ribbon through the hole.
The toppers were stamped on a snippet of ivory card, and the pearl card for the mats was also a snippet so I am skipping over to Pixies' Playground with them.
Thank you for visiting my blog and for your comments which are really appreciated.
I see it just into Monday now so I hope you will pop over to Cardsarus  to read Jenny's TCBH post later today.