New PaperArtsy Stamps and Stencils from Scrapcosy

I am very honoured to be sharing samples for this new release from Scrapcosy.  You can find them over on the PaperArtsy blog tonight.

lavinia stamps challenge #5

It's my husband's cousin's fiftieth birthday on Saturday so he asked me to make a card and, although I've made a couple of others (which I'll share soon), I decided to enter this one into this month's Lavinia Stamps challenge as this really is a card for a 'birthday girl'.

I added some more layers to a gelli printed piece of card then cut the numerals '5' and '0' from it.  I knew I wanted to add some flowers but it took me ages to work out an effective background.  This one is adirondack stream sponged over white card, french verse 2 stamped in stream, then splashes of water to give texture.  This was my third attempt at a background; I recycled one of the others into two tags...

..I decided to be a bit brave and use some different coloured inks to stamp the flowers.  This proved a bit busy for the background of my 50th birthday card but worked perfectly with some fairy silhouettes on my tags.

I particularly liked using some of my newest Lavinia stamps, the zen blossoms, around the edge of the tags.

a great excuse for more tags!

Back in June I had a wonderful time at the  Manchester School of Art degree show.    One of the displays from the foundation art degree area featured a collection of tags at the top of the board and it's something I've been wanting to do since.  I love the layers of different sized tags.

My initial idea was to hang them on a metal mannequin but I don't own one, and the idea never got off the ground.  But up in my new craft room the other day I realised I could hang tags around the room on nails, just like in the photograph!  Tags here I come :)

I love how quickly a tag comes together, especially if you use bits n pieces you've made and not used for other projects.  Now a tag a day I could manage!!!  Minxy's been doing some gorgeous tags daily, take a look here.  And of course the current StampMan challenge is all about tags too, and Jennie's on a roll with them over at The Artistic Stamper.

These silver foil embossed stars were going on pegs, to make fridge magnets, but I have more ideas than time so...