The letter A

Happy New Year to all you taggers, and welcome to any new faces on the Tag Team

I am looking forward to the alphabet theme and the challenge it brings.  I love calligraphy and use writing in my work wherever possible.  My first idea was to make a sampler of calligraphy styles over the 26 weeks, and my fist tag is a capital A written with gold ink on black.  I painted leaf punches in autumnal colours and made a border with them.  I was surprised how the tag shouts ‘Autumn’ without actually writing the word.

What to do with my tags and how to store them was an on-going dilemma last year.  Many of my tags were double-sided or 3D and not really suitable to be kept in a book.  My Autumn tags ended up in a box, and  this Tag would make the perfect label for it.

 

Here it is on the shelf:

It took a while to decide which way to go for the presentation of my Alphabet Tags, but after a flash of inspiration in the middle of the night, I finally decided to combine Tag Tuesday with my other obsession of Family History and create a real Family Tree comprised of tags with family names for each letter of the alphabet, although I’ll need to be creative when it comes to XY and Z!   

One of my favourite ancestral names on my mother’s side is ANGEL.  My 6x Great Grandparents were James ANGEL and Susanna EMMET who were married on 27 August 1781 in Melksham, Wiltshire, England.

On one side of the tag I overlaid 2 leaf shapes so they look a bit like wings. These are painted an ethereal shade of bluey-pink although it doesn't show in the photo! A large letter 'a' is written in silver ink and the other letters for Angel fade into the background.  It is photographed against a copy of the Parish Records I used in my research.

The two smaller leaves are attached to a larger one to which I have stuck a vintage style image of Angels, together with a snippet of antique lace.

I’d better go and look at your A Tags before I decide on a name beginning with B for next week’s tag.

Bye for now

Jane xx