Cabbage Salad

Click to enlarge

I stumbled upon a person who collects images of women's fashion from the Civil War era and I've begun to follow her board. This discovery has prompted me to create collages using similar images. I hope to work out a series and this tag is my first go at it.

I'm also curious why, in many vintage photos, the subject looks so serious. Did no one say "cheese" when the photo was taken? I expect the grumpy face on this lady is why I chose to use her.

I began with a variety of papers including store-bought scrapbook paper, pages from a dictionary, a vintage cookbook and sheet music which I cut into small pieces and pasted on the tag.

After printing the lady, she was added to the tag using my image transfer technique. A homemade stencil was used to trace the outline of a frame with a fine tip marker and several areas were tinted with colored pencils to provide color and contrast. For framing, I cut thin strips from black and white striped paper and pasted them along the edges.

Why Cabbage Salad? For one thing, it's her expression and her face is rather round. And, if you look real close, you'll see that the cookbook's menu page has a listing for cabbage salad aka cole slaw.

Natasha

A pretty Russian ballerina on a starry background surrounded by a Russian banknote is the tag I made for the Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp where the theme is the number five. It was made by simply printing, cutting and pasting and then adding a bit of distress ink along the edges.

I like using this old Russian money because of the intricate frames and was lucky to find one in this denomination. I used a similar note a few months ago which you can read about here.

When I use photographs of people, I pay attention to the light source and try to work it into the composition. Here, I featured the ballerina's back lighting using paper left over from an altered book project. Sometimes I think it's silly to save all my scraps (I kept this one six years) but today, I'm glad I held on to it.

Calling Card

The month of May brings a mosaic-type layout for Tim's 12 Tags of 2014 and here is my interpretation. I don't have much in the way of "cool trinkets" but I do have the Wallpaper stash and it's full of goodies that can be fussy-cut which I used here.

The bottle-cap frame I used for Timothy's portrait was found on the street during a recent stroll around the neighborhood. It was already rusted and flattened-out and I was lucky to find it just in time for this month's tag.

Tim's tutorials are the very best and this month's demonstration was so informative. I'm amazed by all the gadgets that can be used in paper crafting and I look forward to seeing the ShadowPress equipment put to use by others participating in this month's link-up.