Valentine's Day Tag Swap

So you may have noticed while following my blog that there was a gadget related to a "puppy love" tag swap. If not, you can see it on the bottom of this page. It is in reference to an invitation I received from Karla Nathan over at her blog site called http://www.karlascottage.typepad.com/ . I have gotten to know Karla through her blog and through emails we've exchanged back and forth since last fall. She is a multi-talented artist and was one of the bloggers that first inspired me to start my own blog. The idea of the swap was to submit 6 handmade Valentine artist tags that you've made with a "puppy love" theme. Your choice of what you do, and in return you will get back 6 tags that other artists from aruond the US have made. I decided to go for the challenge and thus it began. A side note is that Karlas' dog, Twinkles had given birth to adorable little puppies, thus the theme was born.

I know that Karla loves pink, white and fairies, so thus sent my mind a spinning to create a special necklace for her as a thank you for her hosting this swap. It is a lot of work to host them and this one turned out to be about 60+ artisians being included. I can't wait to receive my tags.

The above tag is the tag that was included with Karla's gift.

So above is a sampling of a few of the items I started my project with. A paper cutter, vintage millinery flowers, old keys, puppy dog charms, alphabet stamps, scissors, glue stick, modge pog, distress ink, paper glaze, hole punch, vintage ribbons/lace, flocked scrapbooking paper, vintage wallpaper, tags, etc.

Ok, so above shows some of the tags cut to size, some were modge pog'd, etc. Ready to embellish with whatever ones heart desires. But oh how the "puppy love" theme taunted me. I really struggled with the theme, and ended up with 5 of my 6 in that theme. Naughty me!

This tag started out as a flocked piece of scrapbooking paper cut out to be a tag. The puppy is a vintage Valentine I bought and cut in 1/2 using it on 2 different tags. The flowers on the bottom right are new and sold through Michael's, but are hi-lited with a vintage mother of pearl button. I antiqued everything with the distress ink. I typed out and printed in red ink the sayings for the different tags and than distressed them as well.

This little girl was so cute, and pink to boot, so I included her in the swap. This one was modge pog'd, vintage lace trim was added, new flowers and again the computer generated question, "will you be mine?" This one is actually my favorite. ;- ) The one that didn't fit in with the rules.

This one represents young love or "puppy love" if you will. It looks better in real, and this photo is showcasing it quite poorly, but I used the vintage millinery on this one, with a mother of pearl button, as well as vintage lace trim.

This one has the typical red Valentine theme color going on with it. I used a sparkly tag to frame the young lovers "puppy love" and strung vintge ribbon through its hole. There is vintage lace, a silver backing, new red/ivory antiqued flowers with computer generated printing for the words.

This tag was made with vintage wallpaper. It is a more unusual color theme, but kind of fits into the whole calm, serene, theme that many of us junkers tend to love. It has that time-worn feel to it. It has been modge pog'd to create a nice tough exterior, and is layered with paper flowers, another white mother of pearl vintage button, an old puppy dog charm that has a wool tassle on it and I hand stamped with the alphabet stamped the wording "PLEASE BE MINE".

This tag was made with the use of a pretty piece of tissue paper and a white pre bought tag. I modge pog'd it, added vintage lace trim, new paper flowers, the other 1/2 of the vintage Valentine and a few more foo foo's to complete it.
I'm not totally thrilled with the outcome of my tags, but hopefully the people receiving them will like them better than I did. I mailed them out on Monday and was so sick, but was able to make a quickie mail run to get them in the mail to Karla in time of the due date. Barely!

A close-up of the pendant I gifted to Karla the swap hostess.

I also thought this would be a supburb opportunity to get to know some fellow bloggers.

This is Karla's tag with her pendant gift wrapped.

I knew the day I came upon 4 of these little butterflies that they would embellish

Karla's gift box when I sent out the tag swap. It just looked like something she would

and could recycle in one of her own future projects. Her gift box was created with sparkly pale pink tissue paper, and was warpped with vintage tri-dyed seam binding tape ribbon and a vintage sparkly butterfly.

It is always fun if when you are gifting someone, that you try to keep all of the items in the same color palette. As you can see the pink tones, vintage feel and recyled items were my foray.

Thanks for taking the time to check out this post. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think of my blog, this post, or other posts I've created. I'd love to here from more people what they'd like to see more of or less of. I was very sick this week, so really wasn't able to post like I had hoped to, so will try to have a few more posts next week for your viewing. Please tell your friends, as I'd love to get enough viewers to actually start having contests, but at this point the viewing size is too small, but I'd love to get a contest started in the next couple of weeks, so please spread the word and get your blogger friends to stop over for a visit.