Be Brave

Hello everybody.  It's lovely to see you again in a busy week here at Words and Pictures.  I'm glad you enjoyed my altered vintage bottles.

I'm here today because it's Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey - that extra Friday in a month which means that the Creative Guides just get out their tags and play.  There are some amazing tags by my fabulous fellow Creative Guides for you to enjoy over at the Tag Friday post at A Vintage Journey - well worth a few minutes of your time during a coffee break some time today.






Tag Friday is always a favourite for me.  Usually I use it as an excuse to just play with my favourite inks and stamps, but this time I've used it to be brave with a different colour palette.

With this layered tag, I've definitely been influenced by some of the fabulous Polish crafters I follow - check out JaMajka, Dorota, or Ewa at Cynkowe Poletko (Zinc Plot) as well as the Russian, Elena Morgun.

If you've never seen their work, you're in for a treat.  I would blame my Eastern European (Czech) heritage for loving all these Polish crafters (and there are more...) but I think it's just that they make very beautiful things!

But really the major influence on this particular tag is another Pole -  Czekoczyna a.k.a. Kasia Krzyminska, whose work I've admired for a long time.

It's unsurprising she should be an influence at the moment, given that she's co-ordinating the Wanderlust 2016 course which I'm very much enjoying when I get the time.  She's also teaching some of the classes.









Of course, it's not unheard of for me to use these kinds of colours (check out this tag in a bag if you don't believe me - and there have been other occasions too), so it's actually the use of the black which feels more iconoclastic to me...

In terms of texture, layers and composition, I guess it's still me though.












I started with some papers from the Tim Holtz Vintage Shabby stack (no longer around, sadly).  One of my resolutions is to use some of my hoarded paper stash, so I'm trying to be good.

I applied Ranger Transparent Matte texture paste through the Burlap Layering Stencil.











Once that was dry, I gesso'd lightly over the whole thing and started adding some inky colour (Spiced Marmalade and Picked Raspberry mainly) by unscrewing the Distress Spray lids and scribbling with the ends of the spray hoses.










Sometimes I spritzed with water for softer colour, and sometimes I dried it so that the scribbles would be nice and bold.  Scribbling was one of the things I found I loved when making my Wanderlust Travel Journal, so you can expect to see more of it round here I think.














The photo is, of course, one of the Idea-ology Photobooth pictures.














The determined gleam in her eye dictated the words chosen from the Small Talk stickers.

And it was when I had those black word stickers that I decided to be braver myself and add some more black detailing.











So I used my favourite alphabet stamp from the Documented set and stamped it in Jet Black Archival.  And I did some spritzing with the Black Soot Distress Marker too.  (I think that's a Prima screw head at the top of the smaller tag, just in case you're interested.)










It's really very rare for me to stamp in black... I'm almost always a brown stamper (Coffee, Sepia or Potting Soil? - that's usually the main question).  Or sometimes I'll push the boat out with Olive, Cobalt or Watering Can.  But black is scary - even in these tiny amounts!














Once that was there, though, I felt brave enough to skim the shabbied edges of the tags too - and I do quite like the bolder grungy look it gives.














There are some Idea-ology flowers with added skeleton leaves tucked in around the place.













And I added some wisps of cheesecloth - some before inking and some after...














... so some of them are inkily colourful, and others wisp delicately away in white.

... and of course there's some dyed crinkle ribbon to top the whole thing off.









So, there you have it... A Vintage Journey's Tag Friday - sometimes an excuse to play in my comfort zone, but today a chance to push the boundaries of that zone a little wider.  I'd love to know what you think.

I'm back once more before we wave goodbye to January but, in the meantime, have a wonderful weekend whatever you're up to.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.  Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Winston Churchill

Be brave enough to live life creatively.  The creative place where no one else has ever been.
Alan Alda