In a Heartbeat

Hello all, and a happy Sunday to you!  There's a brilliant challenge recipe over at DragonsDream Tag It On, set by the amazing Trace from Inkypinkycraft.  It's called "In a Heartbeat", and it calls for a beating heart, a weathered timepiece, and some grunge - and for this challenge, only a tag will do.  Not only is the work from the Design Team totally inspirational, but there are some absolutely cracking entries too - well worth a visit, and still a couple of days left to play as well.

For what it's worth, here's what it summoned up for me...

I went slightly sideways to create the idea of the heart 'beating', and went for a musical 'beat'... so both my heart and my timepiece are made with musical notation.





The clock is a sheet of music from an old songbook, backed onto chipboard and cut with Tim Holtz's Weathered Clock die.  I distressed it with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain DIs and some Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder for extra rusty texture.

The heart is one of the lovely rusty ones available from the Funkie Junkie Boutique (now with a whole new dot com shop), edged with some extra Walnut Stain, and stamped in Staz-On black using the Kaisercraft music stamp.  

It's mounted over the inner circle of the clock die, which got a hit of the grunge stamp as well as a coating of Rock Candy Crackle Paint.

I had an absolute ball making the background.  I stamped the Kaisercraft Grunge stamp quite randomly in black and coffee archival, and then stuck a layer of my bread wrapper wax paper over the whole of it, keeping plenty of wrinkles for texture.

I added some more of the Grunge stamp in a few places - I like that some of the grunge is below the wrinkles, and some more sharply above.








I then brushed Black Soot DI over to highlight the wrinkles.  I blended on some other DI colours, and used some Pewter Perfect Pearls Mist for some gleam, but it still wasn't quite hitting the right note for me.  Finally, I added some Rust Alcohol Ink to the mix, and that gave more richness to the colour, as well as adding a lovely lustre.

I adorned the top of the tag with black paper string ribbon, knotted, and some white raffia ribbon, inked and shredded, and added some rusty bells to help "keep the beat".

Yes, keep the beat, as the sentiment says - the musical beat, the heartbeat - up to you... It's stamped onto paper, and mounted in one of the Funkie Junkie's rusted bottle tops, which I then filled with Crackle Accents.  Took an age to dry fully, or I could have posted last night!

It also caused the ink to run it seems (even though it was Archival), but I quite like the 'bruised heart' look of it!
















As you can probably see from the photos, it's altogether a grimmer, greyer morning today, so perhaps yesterday's post really did tap in to the 'last days of summer'.  But, even without the sunshine, I have to say I'm happier with today's project - more at home than in yesterday's slightly too girly world!

Do hop over to DragonsDream to see lots of fantastic creations out of the same inspirational recipe.  I look forward to bumping into you again soon, either here, or elsewhere in Craftyblogland... and in the meantime, have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you're up to!









I'm entering this - did you guess? - in the In a Heartbeat challenge at DragonsDream Tag It On
At Happy Daze, they're having a Steampunkery challenge - hope it's got just enough!
And with all those rusty elements from the FJB, I'd like to offer it up in the Sunday Share at Frilly and Funkie

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell