WOYWW Decorative Tag

I've had a very minor tidy of one side of my cupboard desk! If you want to see lots more desks tidy or otherwise they are all at WOYWW over at Julia....why not pay a visit after you take a little look at my how to on the tag shape I used for my Pass it Forward gift.

I've got stuff out 'cos I need to decide what I need to take with me on a crafting weekend to Wiltshire. Laura, Sue and I had such a good time at Artsycrafts that we decided to get together for our own little workshop weekend. :)
Three girls having fun again with T!m...well not quite with T!m...but at least with T!m's stuff LOL ;)

I really like making those little hanging pieces like my PiF piece and it all started by buying a garden implement from QVC that had a lovely shaped tag on it......I just reproduced it quite easily...

Want to know the details?

that's the tag and not the garden implement you understand! LOL

Measure a piece of mount board (it is nice and sturdy and won't warp with inks and glue etc) 10cm by 16cm.

Next make marks at the middle point at the top of the tag then draw a line 1.8cm down from the top and 1.8cm in from each edge.

Next you need to find a cup or mug to draw round...lining up the top and where the intersection of the the two 1.8cm lines are.

Next it is cutting it out! There is only one way to do this neatly in my opinion and that is using a scalpel knife. Please be careful if it is not your first cutting tool of choice! Use a steel edged ruler to cut the straight lines and free hand for the semi-circle bit.

....the trick is not to force your way through the mount board in one go....that way leads to disaster and very probably a sliced finger!!!

Ouch not so LOL!

Instead lightly trace your (sharp) scalpel over the pencil line for the first pass and on the next pass your scalpel will follow the slight cut you have just created....I find that you can cut through the mount board in 3 or 4 passes. If your scalpel skills are new and you have a slight wobble....don't panic you can always sand the edges later!

Now I have one of those excellent corner rounders from We Are Memory Keepers that can cut through all sorts.....but it only does on outie corner and I needed an innie corner!
Is there such a tool? If not come on WAMK and make one PDQ!

Anyway I got round it by using a pair of decorative scissors by Fiskars "Cloud" to cut the innie corners instead!

Although I don't think they will stand up to lots of cutting through mount board!

And that's your finished tag just rub away your pencil marks.

Now....whilst it is pretty simple to reproduce I see that T!m has a movers and shapers die out called Vintage Cabinet Card.

(I don't know how big this is though).

It is a very similar shape....only the corner innies are 90 degree straight corners.
...it would certainly speed up the making of the base tag quite a bit :)
Thanks for looking.
Don't forget to pop over and visit Julia and the rest of the work desks. ;)
xoxo Sioux