Musical Tic Tac Toe

Hello all, a warm welcome to you all on what is, for me at the moment, a very chilly evening!  So happy to have your company for a while...


I'm sharing a tag with you today which was inspired by a couple of challenges going on, and which I had such fun making.

At the Fashionable Stamping Challenge they've come over all Musical (well, you knew I'd be playing along with that one, then!); and at Frilly and Funkie they've got a fantastic Tic Tac Toe board (yes, okay, Noughts and Crosses for the Brits amongst us) offering up delicious combinations of possibilities.  You need to "play" a winning line, straight or diagonal.

Mine's the diagonal of Metal, Metallic Distress Stains and Buttons, though it takes in a number of the others too... for a while I was headed for a full-house!




So let's get to it - here's the tag:


The central picture is of Lily Elsie, a huge star of Edwardian operetta and musical theatre, and for whom I've long had a definite soft spot.  The sharper-eyed and longer-memoried amongst you may remember I've used this image before.


I first discovered her when I was writing content for the Theatre Museum website.  (It doesn't exist as that any more, but my work is still there as part of the Victoria and Albert archive online.)  I was lucky enough to get to root around in the archives, looking at programmes, playscripts and other theatre ephemera from the last several hundred years - what bliss...


One of the photographs I had to "animate" with a story or anecdote was of Lily Elsie in The Merry Widow.  You can see it below... and you'll understand that the hat, as well as her general fabulousness, has stayed with me ever since!

So, as I started to play around with elements for this tag, one of my Lily Elsie pictures (picked up on a Google image trawl, and printed out) rose to the surface and demanded a starring role in it.  From there, things just sort of fell into place.

I love the background, which I made using the wrinkle-free distress technique ('Whose technique is that?', I hear you cry... well, there's this guy called Tim Holtz...), but with a few sprinkles of mica powder added, so that you get these fabulous spots of glamour within the texture.

Then I stamped the gorgeous music advert from the Pink Paislee London Market set, using the Tarnished Brass Metallic Distress Stain... I love its sheen.  I also added the music stamp from that same set, as well as the Kaisercraft music manuscript stamp, both done in Coffee Archival.








I used the concert advertisement again to create a piece of 'memorabilia', crumpling and distressing it, to get that vintage look.

And I used Gold and Ginger alcohol inks on one of Tim Holtz's word sticks to get a look that toned in with the warm golden background.











Once that had dried (almost immediately, in other words), I smeared some raw umber acrylic paint onto it with my finger to get it into the recessed letters, then wiped the surface clear to reveal the burnished metal once again.

Now the idea is to have a "musical" tag, so what could be better than adding a couple of the Funkie Junkie's deliciously rusted bells to the trimmings - now "she shall have music wherever she goes".





There's more music in the shape (literally) of the lovely treble clef die from Memory Box, cut from some music paper.  These dies are so delicate - they really delight me.

And this picture also gives quite a good chance to see the stamped metallic distress stains glowing in the (thank you, Universe) late Autumn sunlight.










Mulberry paper roses form another little memento - a bouquet once delivered to the fragrant Miss Elsie?

And the metal button came out of the (seldom-opened) sewing box.  Its provenance and vintage are uncertain, but it must be at least 30 years old, and very probably double that.  To be honest, it was looking a little dull, so it got a little touch of the same alcohol inks as the word stick, and in my head, it came from one of Lily's favourite costumes - perhaps designed by 'Lucile' (see the quote at the end).






I played one of my favourite games with this piece of paper with the Pink Paislee music stamp on - just taking a piece of wooden dowelling and rolling it this way and that to get the lovely dimensional scrolling effect.

Another pen nib is at the ready to jot down any musical or lyrical thoughts which might be inspired by the presence of the muse.

I dyed some seam binding using various combinations of Distress Inks and Stains, including metallic on the darkest of the ribbons.












I'm not sure whether you can see the metallic sheen much, but they certainly seem to glow in the sunshine!

Miss Elsie, it's time for your close-up...  Your close-up, please, Miss Elsie!









I love taking these photographs out of the printer here in 2012, and getting to work to take them back a century or so: Vintage Photo DI (never so aptly used as in distressing 'vintage photos'), creasing, tearing - it gives me a real thrill to be able to create 'character' in a piece of paper this way.









So, I'm very grateful to my musical muse, Lily Elsie, as I think she's come up trumps - this tag really pleases me.  And I'm so delighted that we caught the sun this afternoon, so that I can share its warm golden glow of memory with you in all its proper glory!

Thank you so much for dropping in today.  I'm due a blog visiting catch up, so I hope I'll be dropping in on you in the next couple of days.  See you soon!

I have never known any woman who had the power of turning men's heads in the way that Lily Elsie did. During the years I knew her she had a perfect galaxy of suitors who used to shower presents upon her and wait at the stage door for hours on the chance of a few words from her before she left the theatre.  

She used to keep millionaires and foreign princes hanging about in the cold, draughty passages at Daly's while she and her mother shared a picnic supper of ham in her dressing room. She honestly preferred it to champagne at the Ritz.

From Discretions and Indiscretions by Lucy Duff Gordon (the theatrical costume designer known as Lucile, who dressed and coached Lily Elsie for her role in The Merry Widow)



I'm entering this in the following:
The Fashionable Stamping Challenge where they are inspiring us to get Musical
Frilly and Funkie's game of Tic Tac Toe - I'm playing metal, metallic distress stains, button(s)
With all the mementoes of an Edwardian career, I'm entering this in Try It On Tuesday's current challenge Memories
And with the rusty jingle bells from The Funkie Junkie Boutique (as well, I think, as my metallic distress stains, though I'd have to check that), I'm adding it to the Sunday Share at Frilly and Funkie as well