Today I have a little tutorial for you! While I made my gift tags for the current SAV challenge I took some pictures to show you how I made my big oval framed gift tags. So I hope that you are interested in how this works.

Okay, don’t use an Ancient Page or Memories ink pad for your Clear Stamps otherwise you have a stamp like shown here. Today I’m using the Memento or VersaFine ink pads and my stamps are clear after stamping!

I used Rachelle Anne Miller’s “Frame  – Oval Birds“. Like you see in the pic I covered the birds with some tape. This way they won’t become inked up when inking the stamp! I removed the tape before stamping the frame and…

… now I have a frame without birds! I SO love this oval frame, I think I never stamped it with birds Now I want to place my main image into the oval frame. I know I could stamp the image right over the frame but I don’t want to “break” the beautiful edge so I need a mask.

You see I used this mask before! Stamp your image onto a thin paper (I used a big post it) and cut the middle oval out. Now you have to place your mask over the frame like in the picture above and stamp your main image into the oval which isn’t covered from the mask. Did I tell you that I love Clear Stamps? You can look right through your acrylic block and you will find the right position for your image!

I took the cute Sarah Kay Spring is back image for this tag. You see it’s perfectly matching into the oval frame. After I prepared this tag I had another idea so I made a second tag and of course I also took pics of how it works as well.

This is cute Lucy & Kitty. I stamped the image on my watercolor paper and then made a mask from masking paper (this is what I use for my masks today… the stamp fell off my hand while stamping on my masking paper… LOL … but it isn’t a problem because it’s only a mask and I have to cut the  image out). I cut the important parts of Lucy out and stamped the oval frame over her.

When I removed the mask I had Lucy & Kitty sitting in RAM’s oval frame! You don’t see the birds because they were stamped onto the mask. Of course you can take any other frame stamps you have at home for your (gift) tags.

Now I cut Spring is back out with different oval Spellbinders. Lucy is cut out by hand. I used an oval Spellbinders die cut as template for the oval parts and then cut out her legs and feet with a little white edge around them by hand as well as the oval. The mats are made with Spellbinders and my Cuttlebug machine.

This is a detail of the simple tag. I colored the image with watercolor pencils, the yellow frame around her is made with a Tombow pen (no. 020). I added some sparkles to the dots around the frame.

I think you can see the sparkling dots better in this picture. Here I also added some accents with my white gel pen to Lucy’s dress. In the end I added some sheer ribbon to the tags. Now you can use the gift tags as bookmarks when the special day is over!

I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial. Come on and try it yourself. This way you can also join in our current SAV challenge and with some luck you could be the next winner of our secret prize!