Travelogue birthday card

I don't normally make such involved birthday cards but it happens on occasion and this is one of those.  The college recipient is majoring in tourism...I don't think any further explanations are necessary.

***Before I go any further, I have a Nikon camera that downloads the photos to ViewNx 2.  I have no idea how to successfully crop and resize there so I've tried Irfanview withvery little success.  I still get this black outline around the photos.  I used to use MS Picture but it doesn't work with Windows 8 and have not had any success getting it on my new computer.  

One day to posting...I have now found a new program that works so easy but I can't find where these are stored so I can edit them properly.  I'll probably find it the day after the post goes live.  Sigh.*** 

I did create a monogrammed tag to dangle from the suitcase as well as tiny tags inside with the recipient's name.  I punched 3 holes using my Crop-a-dile so that I could loosely create joints using jute.  The back cover is similar to the front but different travel labels were used.  On the back page I used some OLD Stampers Anonymous narrow kraft/black paper stencils for locations.  Over this I stamped the sentiment on tracing paper so the first layer is muted and in the background.  I used A Dymo labeler for comments on some of the pages.

Ingredients:  Tweed cardstock, white cardstock, Ranger (clear embossing ink, clear embossing ink, distress stains, distress inks, archival inks, Multi-Medium, Glossy Accents); Detail Brass embossing powder (PSX); Life's Journey decorative paper (K & Company), Stampers Anonymous (Travel Labels CMS108, Air Travel CMS102, Warehouse District CMS124, Road Trip CMS128, Travelways CMS162, On The Railroad CMS127, Remants CMS130, Tiny Things CMS164, Simple Sayings CMS155, Rays layering stencil, clockwork layering stencil); Vintage Valise die (Sizzix); Avery sticker paper; Printers' Type & Printers Lowercase alphabets, Brushstrokes Upper & Lower Case alphabets (Hero Arts); Sakura Micron Pen; tiny tag

In the eye of the beholder

It's Week 28 of the Compendium challenge - Colorful Layered Fragments - you can find the details for creating this look on page 57.  Remember me posting about my numerous attempts to master the Scribble Stain Distress?  Well, this tag was one of the ones I didn't like.  Not one to throw away possible background pieces I kept it knowing one day it would come in handy - either as a whole tag or one that could be punched because of the color combo on it.  When I saw it I thought of eye colors (blue, green and brown) and pink eye...no telling where this mind will wander!

So I chose Tim's Oddities and City Central sets for the background and the larger of the 3 eyes; Wendy's An Eye for Art gave me the small and medium eyes.  After very carefully applying the Glossy Accents to the outer edge of the fragments, I dropped the large one and smeared the GA.  Hence, the caption of 'evil eye' since it looks creepy and just plain weird.

I used the Dymo Caption Maker (as seen used by Tim on Tag 8/2010) to create my sentiments.  The largest one I got from Wendy's set Art Begins.

As you can see, the 'eyes' have it and this tag is complete.  Okay, I'll give up the play on words and poor pun.  But somebody has to do it so why not me?!!?!?