History (Or Her Story) Tags plus inchies swap

As I mentioned a few days ago, the last two sets of Tags plus Inchies (TPIs) for the swap my friend Kopperhead organized were themed "Weather or Not" and "History. Or Her Story." For my "His(her)story" TPI, I decided to honor my maternal grandmother, Cora. She lived with us when I was in high school and was a great knitter and crocheter, making hundreds of pairs of mittens and slippers and many, many afghans over the years. If one of our children had been a girl, we planned to use "Cora" for the middle name (but I live in an all boy plus Mom household and love it!).



Here is a photo of Cora, taken in 1912, shortly before she married my Grandfather. Can you believe how tiny her waist is! I love these old family photos and have been planning on doing some heritage albums but I am still working on collecting all of the photos I need.



I scanned the old photo and then created my top layer for the tag using my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus software. I cropped the photo in an oval to eliminate the dark mat frame it was in and softened the edges. Then I layered the cropped photo on some digital paper with a textured overall design and added the words "Remember When" from one of my CM digital kits (but I altered it a bit by making it narrower and taller to fit my image). I printed these images out nine to a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 heavy matte photo paper and then cut and embossed them using the scalloped rectangle Nestabilities. I cut and embossed my colored cardstock backing from the next larger size rectangle in the "nest."

I still needed an "inchie" for my tag so I decided on a sort of "stealth inchie" (!) I cropped the photo of Cora's face with the "circle punch" in the CM program. I use a circle size a bit more than an inch so I wouldn't have a problem punching inchie sized circles after printing,




Above you can see my sheet of faces in circles which I printed on glossy photo paper. (I know there are more than I needed but I decided to fill up the page and may use these little faces on another project). I punched out the faces using my one inch circle punch. Below is a close up view of the glossy inchie, adhered to the large photo with a large dimensional glue dot.



I have created many .cut files for scalloped shapes, and there are now a number of Cricut cartridges that have scalloped shapes, but there is just something irresistible about the embossed edge that you can achieve with the Nestabilities. Here is a closer view... isn't it pretty?!



I punched a hole in the top left corner and added a bit of thin ivory ribbon. Below you can see are my 20 His(her)story tags ready to send for swapping.



I received the other tags in these two swaps yesterday and they are all amazing - it always seems like a lot of work to create multiples of the same item but it is a lot of fun to receive all of the different variations from the other participants.




I must apologize - I know I am behind in my emails and answers to comments but I have been working on an exciting new project - I can't tell you everything about it for a few more days but I may leave a "hint" or two here and there - maybe you will guess what I am up to...! Thanks for all the feedback on the videos I have been making - it has been helpful to hear from so many of you and I have a long list of suggested topics! There will be a new video tomorrow unless my day gets totally crazy...