UK Scrappers August Tag Swap. Theme - Nautical.

The theme for the August Tag Swap is Nautical, so I downloaded a drawing of a lighthouse by the sea which I resized before printing off..
To add to the look I distressed some Tim Holtz Kraft Resist paper with chalk paint, then layered it onto a black Ranger tag and added a band of red and white cotton tape.
Next came a layer of corrugated paper on top of the tape followed by the lighthouse picture mounted onto lightweight dark blue cardstock.
A pink and white seashell picked up on a local beach, some rough twine as a hanger and voila!
Ship Ahoy!

Bloody Royal Mail or is La Poste to blame?

The tags I showed you in the previous blog seem to have gone astray between Normandy and UK.

The deadline for the May Tag Swap is fast approaching

 and just in case they don't arrive at Jill's house in time

 I quickly did three more tags this afternoon.

I'll take them to La Poste in Trevieres in the morning

(the previous tags went from St Clair sur Elle).

 

Trevieres is situated 20 kilometres closer to the English Channel,

perhaps that will make all the difference and they will save the day!

Tag swap - May.

The theme for our tag swap this month is "no theme"!
The choice is ours and Jill has encouraged us to do whatever we like.
As I've mentioned before the main reason that I enjoying creating tags is the freedom it gives me to try new things like using gesso, gelatos and other mixed media processes that I wouldn't normally include on one of my scrapbooking layouts.
Let me say here and now I Love Pinterest!
I could (and do) spend ages looking at boards and pinning away, mainly recipes and scrapping inspiration.
For my tags this month I chose to include ideas inspired by about 3 or 4 of the tags on my board.

 
I used pages from an ancient French school book, scraps of antique lace and buttons still stitched to the original card, all picked up for centimes at a local flea market to create a monochromatic vintage décor.

April tag swap - embossed card

The challenge for the April tag swap at first seemed an impossible one for me to do - use embossed card said Jill (a.k.a lemonblossom).
All well and good, but I don't possess a Big Shot or anything similar that crafters use to emboss cards and papers.
Luckily Jill came to the rescue and popped some pieces of embossed card in the post to me and so I was able to take part this month after all.

I'd had a starter pack of Faber - Castell gelatos for ages and not really used them properly so spent some time watching tutorials on YouTube before deciding to go for it and get messy.

It took me a while to feel comfortable mixing and spraying, rubbing and dripping but finally had four tags that I was quite satisfied with.

clocks

hearts, flowers & stars

happiness

wisdom

Although we usually only swap 3 tags I'm going to send all 4 to Jill as I think she deserves to chose one of them to keep (if she likes them that is!) before putting the remaining 3 into the swap.