In the Craftavan

I spent a little time in my craftavan the other day and finally caught up with three weeks' worth of Tag Tuesday tags. Feels good, yeah!

JAPAN was the theme two weeks ago. I used two different Japanese papers for the background and an image of a young Geisha girl with a Japanese Art Doll for the focal point. Cut out Japanese cherry blossom, a little tag with Japanese writing and two tiny origami birds, all in lovely cherry blossom pinks -

Last week, the theme was BUGS. I quite enjoy watching the many varieties of bugs we get in the garden here at the cottage in France. I especially love one particular beetle, no idea what it is called, but it is the most beautiful iridescent shimmering metallic green, almost like an oil slick.

The bugs on my tag aren't quite so pretty. They are illustrations from a 19th Century French scientific dictionary, which I had picked up at a brocante a while ago. For the background I used a piece from a 1910 magazine in a lovely shade of light green and three different washi tapes ( middle and edges ). A little bit of greenery and a tiny flying bug charm and the tag was complete -

And finally, this week's theme is SUMMER HOLIDAYS. I spent some fabulous working holidays on a German island when I was a teenager, and I have such lovely memories of beach parties, swimming in the sea etc, so that every time I hear the world holidays, I automatically think of seaside. So it had to be a vintage seaside tag for me this week ;-) -

 I used four different blue inks to create the sky and the sea, used typewriter key images for the words, and cut out a few shells to go onto the image of the sand. Lovely young bathing beauty from the 1920s or thereabouts ( who just caught a fish, lol ), a couple of silver and white clouds and seagulls in the sky and a blue seambinding ribbon to finish it off.

The Thursday evening brocantes have started again ( July and August in our area ), and yesterday started off with such a beautiful cloud free blue sky that we were sure the brocante in St. Didier wouldn't get rained off again like in previous years. And then shortly after lunch, within minutes it seemed, huge black clouds came up out of nowhere and the heavens opened. Thunder, lightning, torrential downpour, but it was all over within half hour or so. Hah, we thought, this year the thunderstorm has come early, and the brocante will be just fine! So at 4.30 we set off for St. Didier in blazing hot sunshine. Some stall holders were already set up and doing brisk business, others were still driving in. I wombled about for 10 mins or so, and then, to my horror, heard distant thunder. Looked up ( usually I am looking down at stalls, lol ), and omg, there were enormous black clouds rushing towards us. And yes, you guessed it, once again, third year running, the weather god decided to spoil our fun. Within seconds, I was drenched, and the stall holders were frantically trying to cover up their wares or grabbing them and returning them to their vehicles. I felt so sorry for them and the village, three years in a row, thats just not funny. All the wonderful evening activities which go with the evening brocantes, all rained off. I did manage to find a couple of little things within those few minutes of sunshine though, including a gorgeous big old Eau de Cologne bottle with a beautiful old label. More about that later.

Thank you for visiting again. Toodlepip xxx