I’m BACK!  Did you miss me?  Wow!  This has been the loooooongest hiatus I’ve ever taken from Blogging!  I missed all of you and your kind words.  I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!

I haven’t been sitting around!  I promise.  I’ve actually been working on a new site for your crafting pleasure as well as attending a bunch of conferences on everything from Crafting to Blogging and all kinds of other techie “stuff.”

For the Art Conference, I had to make Swaps.  I’d never attended this particular event before so I had no idea what everyone would be trading.  I created both a Distressed Tag and a Vintage Key so all my bases would be covered. LOL

The tag was created with my boyfriend’s Distress Inks (Yes!  Of course, Tim! LOL).  Just spritzed them on a craft sheet, sprayed with water and swiped the tag through.

Did the Spritz & Flick technique to create some water spots.  Dried with my heat tool and stamped with Black Archival Ink.

I made quite a few Vintage Tags!  The Statue of Liberty tickets were a nod to my NY roots (Yeah!  Born & Raised, baby!)  They were created by die cutting manila card stock with Tim’s ticket die and stamping an old Statue of Liberty Stamp in Black Archival Ink.  Colored it in, distressed the edges and sponged with Walnut Stain Distress Ink and then adhered them to the tag.

The keys were adhered to filigree circles and then Evergreen Bough Distress Paint was randomly applied.  Different embellishments were added and then fibers were pulled through the hole in the filigree.

I always get a little intimidated when I’m swapping with a group for the first time but everyone was so gracious and seemed to really like them.  Here’s a cool picture from one of the artists who taught the 3-day Master Class I took.  Her name is Sharon Payne-Bolton and she was AWESOME!  It’s fun to be the student sometimes – especially after being the instructor for so many years.  I learned the art of Book Binding using the Coptic Stitch.  So much fun!