Luggage Label

Hello all, I'm back with my second offering of the month for Jennie's Nautical theme over at Country View Challenges.

You can find the challenge details and lots of inspiration there.  Do come and play to be in with a chance of winning the prize voucher generously sponsored by Country View Crafts.

I double-checked the definition of Nautical - "of or pertaining to sailors, ships or navigation" - to see what I could find in my stash to fit.

The map notations on my Nautical ATB fit the bill well but, given that shipwrecks and undersides of boats and barnacle-y rocks form part of one of my only phobias, I don't really have much else in the stash that is particularly nautically inclined.












Fortunately, I remembered that I do have the fabulous Tim Holtz ship stamp, part of the Artful Voyage set.

I thought I'd seen a similar image somewhere, and found it amongst the pieces in the Expedition Ephemera Pack.  I realised that these ephemera would be able to come to my rescue, along with some papers from one of the Tim paper stashes... and this layered tag is what I came up with. 










The main background is one that's been sitting around on my desk for months.  (In fact I seem to remember I made it in the Czech Republic, which would make it about April or so!)

Finally the ocean colours and swirls of the Distress Paint marbling seemed to come into their own.  At some point I'd added the alphabet stamping with another plan in mind, but I decided that the swirly font just added to the flow of the water!









The largest extra layer is an additional tag, gently inked and then stamped with the ocean liner and some of the travel documents from the same set.

That's when I started to gather some more ship-oriented ephemera to layer into position.











The photos are cut from an 8x8 sheet in Tim's Menagerie paper stash.











There was another photo from the same page on my recent Missing You Postcard - they're such great travel images.

They've been inked and distressed around the edges - mainly with Vintage Photo, but I think there's a touch of Gathered Twigs in there too.













And the labels, and tags, and globes are all from the Expedition Ephemera Pack, all distressed and inked on the edges too, of course.











I added some thin twine through all the luggage labels.  I like the slightly messy random look of it - adding a bit of life to something which is otherwise a bit flatter than I'm used to dealing with!

I couldn't resist using the same twine to attach one of the fabulous Word Bands.

I've always been a hoarder of travel tickets and mementos.  Somewhere there's a whole boxful of stuff from my trip to Egypt (nearly a decade ago now), still waiting to be formed into a travel journal.  So the word SOUVENIR seemed appropriate.




Once everything was stuck down, I roughed up the edges even more, trying to add a bit more dimension and movement.  I hope you like it - I think it captures something of the age when travel still had a touch of glamour and adventure, rather than the dehumanising drudgery it tends to be these days!

There's more nautical inspiration throughout the month over at Country View Challenges, so do pop over every now and then to take a look.  And we'd love to see what you come up with for the Nautical challenge this month, so come and play along.

I'll try to get around to sharing some of my current travels with you soon, but we're working pretty much flat out, so there's not a lot of spare time, sadly.  I hope to fit in some blog-travelling soon...  Until then, happy crafting all!

We travel, some of us forever, to discover other states, other lives, other souls.
Anaïs Nin

Supplies available at Country View Crafts:
Stampers Anonymous - Artful Voyage and Typography stamp sets
Distress Paints - Evergreen Bough, Chipped Sapphire, Picket Fence
Distress Inks - Stormy Sky, Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs
Tim Holtz Menagerie Paper Stash 8x8
Idea-ology Ephemera Pack - Expedition
Tim Holtz Paper Distresser
Manila Tags




Also, a quick dollshouse update... you can now finally see inside the "old house in Paris, that's covered in vines" over at Cestina's Dollshouses.