New Year, New Beginnings - A Pair of Tags

This fortnight's  prompt over on Tag Tuesday is New Year, New Beginnings and I went with a Spring theme and made two tags.  I found the perfect background on my inky paper pile.

Cover a #8 manilla tag with the top layer of a piece of inky paper towel, seal with matte medium, dry and trim the excess.

Add one of the eggs from the Clarity Chicks and Eggs stamp set in Ground Espresso archival ink.

Stamp one of the chicks from the same set on top of the egg in Black Soot archival ink.

Add shading to the images using Faber-Castell big brush markers, blended out with a Pergamano blending pen and nibs.

Add yellow flock to the chick using a quickie glue pen and yellow fun flock powder.

Add a glaze to the eggs and the beak of the chick using a clear embossing pen and heat emboss in clear embossing powder. To finish, add the Clarity Spring stamp (NDC #100) in Onyx Black Versafine ink and heat emboss in clear powder. Colour using Faber-Castell big brush markers.

Cover a #8 manilla tag with another section of the top layer of the same piece of inky paper towel as before, seal with matte medium, dry and trim the excess.

Stamp some of the Wee Foliage stamps at the bottom using Library Green, Peat Moss, Ground espresso and Black Soot archival inks.

Add the foliage from the Birdhouse Garden stamp set at the top in the same manner.

Add one of the bunnies from the stamp set of the same name at the bottom in Ground Espresso archival ink.

Stamp the same bunny onto Clarity stencil card in the same ink.

Colour with a Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer water colour pencil scribbled on the Pergamano mix mat and picked up with a watercolour brush pen.

Fussy cut (taking off the whiskers, edge with a brown brush pen and add to the tag.

To finish, add the Clarity Time for Something New stamp (NDC #113) in Onyx Black Versafine ink and heat emboss in clear powder. Colour using Faber-Castell big brush markers.

NB For those not sure what an inky paper pile is.  I keep all my sheets of copy paper and paper towels that I have used to mop up ink off blending mats, cleaning stamps and stencils and removing excess ink/paint from brayers.

New Beginnings: A JJAMMMA Tag Swap

As my swap partner for the August tag swap over on Junk Journals and Mindful Mixed Media Art has now received the tags, it is safe to share the process of their creation.  The theme this month was New Beginnings.  As usual, I found the perfect background on my inky paper pile.

Quarantine Quickies #93 & #94: Celestial Body / Fur Baby

The latest instalment towards 100 tags, following the prompts on Mission Inspiration.  I found the perfect paper towel mop up sheets on my pile to use as backgrounds for these.

Quarantine Quickies #85 & #86: Rose Garden / Do It Yourself

Still taking my time to interpret the first 100 Quarantine Quickie prompts over on Mission Inspiration.

Quarantine Quickies #61 & #62: Night Owl / Tall Story

The latest two pages in my Quarantine Quickie tag journal following the daily prompts over on Mission Inspiration.  Here are #61 and #62.

Quarantine Quickies #31 & #32: Cards on the Table / Monkey Business

For my latest interpretations of the Quarantine Quickie prompts over on Mission Inspiration I decided to use a similar colour scheme and the same process on both tags.

Quarantine Quickie #1 & #2: Rooftops and Smoking Chimneys/Bell Book & Candle

I am rather late to the game over on Mission Inspiration.  The daily quarantine quickie prompts have been going for over a week already.  I am catching up at the rate of two a day and decided to create a new tag journal with the pages.  Here are my first two.

Layers on Layers: A Birthday Card

This is the card I made using the left over ink off the stencils that I used for yesterday's art journal page (see HERE).  Although Leonie's stamps are large, they can still be used for smaller projects.

Heat Embossing and Collage over Paper Towel Background

After the success of my last quick art journal page, I decided to have another play with my scraps and create another double page spread in my Moleskine journal.  It is the first journal that I bought and the last one that I actually started using, due to my nervousness and the fact it was expensive in comparison to all the rest.  These days I don't think about that, I just grab the nearest suitable journal and use it.  All stamps and stencils used are from Claritystamp.

Junk It Up: An Art Journal Page

The second week of each monthly prompt over on Nina Ribena's Art Journal Prompts and More is 'Junk It Up'.  As the main January prompt is words,  I decided to use magazine clippings that appealed to me over the top of some paper towel mop up sheets to create my page.

Paper Towel Backgrounds on ATCs

These ATCs were made for the June swap over on Junk Journals and Mindful Mixed Media Art.  The prompt was the letter R.  As always, I only used Claritystamp stamps and stencils for my ATC projects. 
For a change, I decided to use paper towel mop up sheets for the background of each ATC.  Usually, I stamp and colour directly onto the precut ATC cards (2.5" x 3.5") which I have in my stash, but I am glad that I added a background first as I love the way that these turned out.

WOYWW 471: Guest Desk?

Well, I had been intending to share some desks from the monthly journal meet up in Stockport with the JJAMMMA crowd, but I totally forgot to take my camera and I have no idea how to download photos from my phone!  Instead, you'll have to make do with my desk in the shed when I got back. 

The ATCs that I made earlier for a swap are face down ready to have the backs filled in and glued into place.  They are being posted today first class, so I will be blogging them on Friday.  Some of the paper towel mop up sheets that I used in  the background of each ATC are at the back, together with some blank cards with interesting images, which were a gift from a friend at the meet up.
The other side of the desk is empty, as Eva was busy marking some speaking exams which she had been offered last minute.  We will be catching up and crafting on Saturday, so I will take a picture then.  If you want to know why I seem obsessed with desks then visit our chief desker Julia over on the Stamping Ground.  There you will find out all about WOYWW and find many more desks to look at, should you be so inclined.
Don't forget that you can also comment via the Sarah's Craft Shed Facebook page if you are unable to comment directly on this post. 
I may be late visiting this week as I have some late meetings and the last of my reports to finalise today.

The Forty Minute Tag Challenge!

This tag was created in under forty minutes in response to a speed challenge set in a FB live session with Lou Withers of Junk Journals and Mindful Mixed Media Art (JJAMMMA).  We had to create a tag using the theme of Paris in a limited amount of time and upload an image to the FB page.

I love you to death...

I was making a quick tag ready to share today and ended up going in a very dark direction.  The tag definitely fits the prompt over on Country View Challenges for February: Anything but cute, so I will be sharing it as my final submission for this month.  Although I do have a husband and three sons, I can assure you that no family members were hurt in the creation of this art work!