Two Black Bats

 This image of a 1800s era girl in a Halloween bat costume and the flourish and swill background (embellished with a glitter pen) both came from Graphic Fairy. The edges of the tag were embellished with Tim Holtz Aged Mahogany Distressed ink. 

I finished the tag off with a couple of die cut black glitter paper bats...after all, if you are Bat Girl you can never have too many bats!

Tape, Tag and Basic Gray

I have been playing with decorative tape.  I guess you could call it a Washi tape knock off.  Real Washi tape is a high quality masking tape made of rice paper that come from Japan. The tape I used came from Michaels, and not made from rice paper.  There are dozens of creative ways to use this tape...check out Pinterest  if you are looking for ideas.

I tried out  a few different  ways to play with the tape from some idea pages, and then my creativity kicked in. I rummaged through some of my toys and came up with a manilla tags, a piece of an oldie but goodie  Basic Gray patterned paper, image from Graphic Fairy ( gotta love the Fairy) and a part of a lace applique ... I put them all together and created...

The tape becomes transparent when it is  applied to the tag .The ribbon for the tag is made out of  the black  decorative tape that has been folded  in half, looped through the hole at the top of the tag, then tied in a knot.

The decorative  tape is on the bottom of the tag, stacked  above each other, The image was printed on clear sticker paper. The tape and the image  are transparent and the cool Basic Gray patterned paper  design shows through.

For the Birds

Karen over at Graphics Fairy shares wonderful ephemera. Every night she adds another treasure. I love the graphic of the birds in a nest on this vintage second grade reader page.
I used the reader page along with the red bird on this advertising card for an insurance company, also from Karen...

that I combined with patterned paper, a stamp with distress ink, some ribbon, and a couple of flowers sprayed with a bit of glimmer mist ...

to create this card that I sent out as a birthday card...

thanks Karen for sharing!

Fairys, a Bathing Beauty and Birthdays

One of my favorite Blogs is Graphics Fairy. If you haven't discovered Karen's wonderful images, you don't know what you are missing! Karen shares at least one new image a day. She has a site full of treasures she has found, fixed, edited and improved.
I discovered this fun image of a vintage bathing beauty on Karen's site a while ago.

When I was making cards this Summer for all the "Fall" birthdays, I printed off the photo, cut around the image, added some patterned paper, lots of Stickels,

a vintage postcard, a few rhinestones...

and created a "By the Sea" collage card. All the cards have been sent out to friends and family with "Fall" birthdays, so I'm finally able to post these.