Valentine Tags

Several years ago I bought this tag at a discount store.  I loved the design, the texture, the colors, everything!  I’ve used it a couple of times now as inspiration.

 

The first time was for a Christmas atc swap on the Pennywise Arts Yahoo Group.  I made 50 of them!

 

 

 

Last week I used it to jump start some Valentine tags.  My friend Julie Imsland came to craft with me so she made one too.  I always like to see the subtle differences when different people do the same project. 

 

This one is mine:

This one is Julie’s

We both used the “Roses Are Red 1” collage sheet from the Pennywise website for our rose background paper.  There are lots of gorgeous images to choose from!  I used red and gold opaque micro beads on my heart and Julie used ultra fine clear micro beads on her bird.

Now look closely at the hearts:  

The one from the purchased tag is crimped one way.
	Julie showed me that if you fold your heart in half and put it through the crimper you get lines going in two directions
If you fold it in half and put it in the crimper another way the lines will go upward.  I can’t remember which is which but one of us put the point in first and the other put the rounded end in first.

If this design inspires you too, please share a photo of what you make!  If I get it before February 7th and if I get at least 12 entries to share, I will be awarding one of my heart charms to a lucky participant!  

Use the “Contact Me” button on the blog to send an email with photo.

Hugs, Suzanne

More Holiday Ornament Inspirations

On page two of the Pennywise Arts website Art Gallery Stephanie Loomis has some elegant dominoes. Snowflakes are always quick and easy and I love how she has oriented one sideways!

We also have some purse charms (not sure who made them though).

I love the idea of doing some tag ornaments using the ball chain as a hanger. I always save the little chains thats sometimes come on clothing tags (usually my son's jeans) and this would be a neat wayto use/recycle them!

Hugs and Happy Holidays,
Suzanne

Postage Collage

Michelle McCarthy used a fun Serendipity technique on this tag:

She covered each side of the tag with O’So Sticky Tape and layered all of her collage items onto the tape.  As one of the last steps she filled in all of the gaps with micro beads!

 

There are so many fun items on these tags!  I’d love for Michelle to share what all she used!  (I didn’t get to keep one of these for my book because I only did one set of tags and Michelle did two.)

Postcard Collage

Lynn Lake used recycled vintage post cards for her travel tags along with a quote by Mark Twain:

Let’s get moving!!  Ü

 

Take A Ride

Vicki Chow’s travel tag has a fun garage door opening:

And inside is her classic car!

I remember the fun of road trips as a kid in my mom’s classic 1967 California Special Mustang, good times!

Enjoy The Journey

Kelli Green’s travel tags are “Totally Tim”!!  From the coloring technique to the stamps, style and embellishments Kelli has done Tim Holtz proud! Here’s your ticket to ride along!

Passport To Adventure

Passports are always a requirement if you want to adventure beyond our country borders and Mary Wallace has given us our very own passport to adventure anywhere we’d like to go (in our imaginations at least!)

Completely embossed on the outside, Mary’s passports feel like the real thing!  Inside of the passport Mary has actually added fun travel stamps as well as some of the official passport stamps from Friends and Company’s passport club!

Wild Joys

Welcome to the jungle of Michelle McCarthy’s 2nd set of travel tags!  Michelle confessed that she used items from her children’s toy box for this design:

So creative!  And one of my favorite stamps is on the back:

Stamp Credit: Wordsworth

Seattle Skyline

Julie Imsland’s inspiration came from this great photo taken by her husband Mark.  With some tricky measuring Julie was able to get Mount Rainier to line up perfectly in the window of this shaker card!  The bead mix was odd to see apart from the card, but it worked splendidly with the colors in the photograph!

Two darling shrink plastic charms hang from the edge.  The Mount Rainer one is shown clearly, the Washington one is black and blends into the background of the photo. And when I saw what Julie was up to I knew I had the perfect stamp for her to use on the backs of her tags!  It’s an old unmounted stamp, so I am not able to give it credit.

C’est La Vie

There is so much interest and texture in Kathi Hall’s tag design it takes awhile to let it all soak in!

Ultra thick embossing, stamped swirls, brads, hemp, collage images and colorful shrink plastic charms all add to the “charm” of Kathi’s playful design.

Take Me To Paris

Leola Johnston’s tags take us to the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  Layered papers and hand cut towers grace the front while whimsical fibers peek out from between them.

On the back a vibrant compass photo gets us thinking of the fun places we could go from there!

Mini Travel Journal

Melissa Ragsdill (aka “Lady Chat”) created cute little travel journals for her tags complete with a little baby pen:

The pages accordion out with space for miniature pictures, captions and travel notes.  The bull clip holds it all together.

Damaged By Salt Water

When I got started on my travel tags I posted to my blog about my art process, with the full intent of coming back and sharing how the rest of the creating went.  Unfortunately I procrastinated until the last minute and totally forgot about that promise until just now!  But that’s okay, I didn’t do too much more and it’s easy to share what/how I did it.

The original post can be found here:

http://pennywisearts.blogspot.com/2010/08/art-is-process.html

And this is where we left off:

In fact, my table still looks very much the same!  M.E.S.S.Y. Ü

Here is the seashell wave I made using Sure Tac glue, shells and clear micro beads:

When it was dry I took a bottle of alcohol ink and just squeezed drops over it all, letting the ink run wherever and however it wanted to.  Deciding that it needed more interest and dimension, I went back over it again just touching some of the shells with a drop of a darker ink color as well as some with a pearl color.

The acetate waves were applied to the tag with huge dimensional glue dots to raise them up off the page and make it “fat”.  I love that they are clear as well, so hardly show at all.

Once they were on the page I hit the edges of the acetate with a heat tool causing them to buckle and curl just a little.  I really liked the effect!  It really made the waves look more realistic!

Next I glued a fancy bead trim across the bottom of each tag:

Baby tags were cut with my Cricut to mimic the same shape as the big tag and embossed with one of my favorite verses in a sparkly glitter embossing powder:

The backs papers were also cut with my Cricut and I spritzed with water to nearly soaking.  Then I sprinkled table salt all over them and let them dry completely.  Then I took my finger and rubbed at the paper until some of the fibers rubbed away and tore. To pull some of the purples in I spritzed some eggplant color wash randomly and stamped “Damaged by Salt Water” across the back. 

Stamp Credit:  Nick Bantock

Here’s the final product of my travel tags for the fat book:

It was a fun process that spanned a couple of months.  Being a social crafter I always found it easier to create when I had company over.  I am grateful to all of the gals who helped contribute thoughts, ideas and opinions and to Leola for helping me redo the little tags three times to get them perfect!  Ü

Explore

Diane Walter is sure to keep us all from getting lost with these spiffy compass pages!

It’s hard to show in the picture but the back of Diane’s tags look just like a real luggage tag with the cut out border and acetate over her info!  (Of course for privacy reasons I had to block out some of her information.)

G’day!

Cathy Varner takes us on a little trip to “Oz” with her fun “down under” theme:

Are we there yet?  I so wish we were!

You Are Here

This page was created by Annette Lanker.  Famous for her use of micro beads and bling Annette’s collage is wild and fun!

Whenever anyone does something interesting on the back of their page I like to show that too!

See The World Fat Book Swap

I’ve started the process of photographing the fabulous artwork from our most recent fat book swap on the PennywiseArts yahoo group! 

Here is the first teaser,…. My book (I know it’s mine because my page is on the top!) Ü

I’m excited to share the rest of the pages with you! Hang on!!

Coffee and Hairspray

Amen Sister!

Tag created by Beki Ward

Art Is A Process

The Pennywise Yahoo community has a lot of really great swaps throughout the year.  The fat book page swaps are one of my favorite.  The current fat book theme is “See The World” using a luggage tag template that was provided.

Alert!  If you are in this swap and want to be surprised you should stop reading now.  This blog post could be interpreted as a swap spoiler and I wouldn’t want to influence you in any way.

It was easy to decide that I wanted to do something with the ocean because of all the stuff I have that I could use (and use up!) in doing it.  Plus, I just love the ocean!

As I was working on my tags I became very aware of my own personal art process:

1. I am a social artist.  I gain enthusiasm and inspiration when sharing a play day with other artists.  The afterglow of spending time with friends making art lasts for days and I love this intensely creative time.

2.  I don’t usually have a plan for how the end will look, I just ride the wave of “now” and see where it takes me. 

3. I make a big mess when doing art!

For the first part of my tag process I covered chipboard with paper from Design Originals.  Then I clear embossed part of the image with a shell stamp to give the illusion of water.  Stamp credit: Stampington and Company

Friends can be the best resource of all for ideas and inspiration.  My friend Julie came to play and shared some recycled heavy acetate with a wave shape cut from one side.  The wheels started turning and I knew I wanted to incorporate that wave into my design.

I thought about the wave on the sand square of my dollar store art (see previous post) and decided to use that technique on my tags.  I cut the acetate to match the length of the tags and then squeezed out a line of Sure Tac Glue.  I then placed shells along that line and added clear micro beads for grout on the spaces in between.  The glue will dry clear.

And that is as far as I have gotten so far.  I think I’ll continue to share my process as I experience it with these tags.  One thing is for sure, I definitely have a messy process!  Here is a picture of my table:

Hugs, Suzanne

P.S.  If you are interested in joining the 10 for 10 luggage tag swap and receiving one of my tags in trade, please contact me!  The due date is August 31st – still a whole month away!

More Than A Tag

 

Our featured designer for April is Evelyn Spikes Evelyn is “a happily retired high school English teacher in NE Oregon.”  She says, “I am fortunate to be able to spend as much time as I want crafting with paper and taking photographs. Married for more than 30 years, my husband and I have two grown sons....one in western Oregon and one in New York.”

We are excited to share some of the art that Evelyn has created in her spare time for the Pennywise Arts Design Team!  This is her first project, “More Than a Tag”. In this post Evelyn shows and tells us how she made this unique tag design, if you want to follow along just gather up these supplies:

*  Medium-sized tag (2 5/8 x 5 ¼”) and  an additional tag for cutting (manila file folder or cardstock can be used)

*  Collage stamp with distinct geometric images

*  Dye ink color of choice

*  Paperback O’So Sticky

*  Foam squares

*  Clear ultrafine micro beads

*  Choice of coordinating embellishments, including ribbon

How To Do This Technique

Step 1. Use dye ink to stamp tag with collage stamp.

Step 2. Stamp a second time on extra tag.

Step 3. Cut out desired geometric images in collage.

Step 4. Using cut-out images, trace shapes on paperback O’So, cut out and apply to images.

Step 5. Bead images with clear beads. Set aside.

Step 6. Apply ink to edges of stamped tag.

Step 7. Using foam squares, apply beaded collage shapes to matching locations on tag.

8. Apply embellishments and coordinating ribbon.

 

Stamp Credit: Inkadinkado

Evelyn has her own art blog where she shares her creations.  It’s updated regularly and is a great source of inspiration.   Be sure to check it out!