12 Tags of 2014, Tag You're It

Two tags for you today. The first one is my offering for the 12 Tags of 2014 for July.  The umbrella man was a spare from making this card.  I performed a little surgery on him by turning him into a barefoot paddler.  (I drew his bare feet and rolled up pant legs on the reverse and trimmed them.)

I made the wet sand from Walnut Stain Distress Stickles and sprinkled some copper embossing powder onto it and let it dry naturally.  I don't have a bubble embossing folder so I just used a stylus and a soft mat to draw bubbles in a piece of acetate.  I bought the stylus over 40 years ago to use on stencils for a Roneo Gestetner duplicating machine at work.  See, that's how long I've been using stencils!  And more remarkable is the fact that I kept the stylus, through relocating to Australia for six years and re-relocating back to the UK.  Never throw anything away, you never know when you might need it ;))

Anyway, back to the tag.  Here's Tim's:

Sand, tick.  Bubble layer, tick.  Watery background, tick.  Starts going pear-shaped after that!  I'm also entering this into Simon Says Monday - A mid-Summer Challenge

The next tag is for the new Tag, You're It challenge with guest designer Laura Bassen:

I used an embossing folder as a paint palette to take a print.  There was too much white space so I sponged over the white with the same colours.  Rather than a vellum leaf layer, I used a branch from my stash, left over from making this card.  The black ribbon was pre-stamped with the sentiment.