I'm so excited to share this tag with you because it took my old puzzler some trial and error to come up with a solution to using die cuts with foil. My first attempt was to take a sheet of scor-tape and run it through my die cutter. The idea was that I would peel off one side and place it onto the background, peel off the top layer and then press the foil on it. Well that's great for circles and leaves but for the damask die cut there were some long skinny parts to it so when I tried to peel off one side it just stretched and stretched. Then it folded over itself. I even tried placing wax paper over the picture of the damask die for "perfect" placement so that I could then flip the whole thing sticky side down onto the background and peel away the wax paper. I just couldn't get the little skinny pieces to behave.


Then I noticed that I had a negative cut out of the damask die (the part left over after the pieces are taken out) sitting right there on my table! Well daaaanng! Why didn't I just slap some foil down and then layer the damask cut out over it? I did one better by laying down the scor-tape sheet cut to size onto the tag, put the damask cut out over it and then presssed the foil onto to the exposed sticky areas. I feel so clever! Believe me, that doesn't happen very often for me. I just hope that some of you genius artists out there aren't snickering to yourselves and saying "Well, that's no big deal!"

Well here are some pictures of how I did it.

First, I cut and glued some black cardstock to a tag and trimmed to fit. I traced around it onto the scor-tape and cut it to size. This stuff is really sticky. When you place it on the tag pull back a little to reveal the sticky part, then align it to the tag and slowly peel the backing off. Think contact paper when putting it sown on your shelves.

Then peel off the top layer off.

Here's my gelli printed damask die cut.

It was too big for the tag so I off set it.

Here's the foil on the roll waiting to be cut and applied. Don't forget color side up!

 Trust me you will do the other way!

Here you can see the parts that have come off the foil tape leaving a clear spot. I pressed the foil with my fingers then used a Shading and Texture tool to lightly press the foil into the edges. There's a few areas where I pressed too hard and too much and dulled the foil some. The nice thing about the foil that you can use every square inch of it until there's no more foil left.

Here it is all finished. Yeah! I added some green tape and wrote on it with a .05 pigma pen. Then I added the letter F and secured it with a silver brad. Added some more green tape at the bottom.

These supplies are available at Altered Pages:

Tag

Gelli Printing Plate

Damask Die Cut

Foil Roll

Micron Pigma Pen .05

Shading and Texture Tool

Ingrid

E is for Embellishing

I'm on to the letter E in my alphabet tag series. As with all the tags so far I'm using up some of my Gelli prints for backgrounds, as well as the letter E and the flourish die cuts in this case. The brads were dipped in glue and then glitter. I found some silver ball stickers in the dollar bin at Michael's and I used a silver gel pen to write the words.

Completed Mermaid Treasure Box

This is my finished Mermaid Treasure Box project that was made for a kit at Altered Pages and I will be submitting it to the Unruly PaperArts Reader Art Quest challenge. July's theme is Marvelous Mermaids. Go check it out!

Learning my ABC's

School's just around the corner and you're never too old to try new techniques. I have to admit I was scratching my head wondering what on Earth I was going to post for today. So when in doubt pull out some and start altering away. Thank goodness I had a million Gelli prints in my paper stash to choose from. The beauty of making your own Gelli prints is that you will always have original one of a kind prints to use at your disposal which makes anything you make with them your very own. Then it was just a matter of cutting and pasting papers onto the tags and adding some embellishments. I'm loving those gears - especially the little ones with a little paint added to them - to use in place of the reinforced holes of the tags. My favorite tag so far is the letter C with Mr Lamb professor from the AlteredPages  Curiosity of Nature collage sheet.

Also used:
Manila Tags
Gelli Printing Plates
Chipboard Gears
Lightbulb Safety pins

D is for Doodling

On to D in my alphabet tag series. The background was made from a Gelli print with cheesecloth laid down as a mask. I used a Micron .01 pen to doodle with and then added watercolor pencils to shade and highlight. The tag, pen, Gelli printing plate and lightbulb safety pin are from Altered Pages. The black number tape is from Cavellini & Co.

Vacationing in Washington state

We spent 6 wonderful days in Washington state with family and friends. Such a welcome respite from the Phoenix inferno valley. Wished we could of stayed longer. Sigh. These pictures were taken from our host's camera.

 Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island

 Olympic Mountains at Hurricane Ridge

Rialto Beach near the infamous Forks town where Twilight was filmed.

Going to Seattle for the day.