With a flourish...

Hello all, delighted to have your company for a while today.  It's Tuesday and time for a new challenge at Fun With ATCs.

It was magnificent to have so many of you playing and hopping along with the birthday celebrations last time around, and the prize winners and our top 3 will be announced soon.

In the meantime, why not join in with the new challenge: Flourishes.

There's lots of inspiration from my amazing DT team-mates, and here's my offering.

As soon as I saw that Flourish was coming up as a theme, I knew that I wanted to use one of the gorgeous, delicate wooden flourishes from Crafty Emblies, even though I used one on my Ring in the New ATC only a couple of challenges ago - I didn't know then that this was on the cards!












This time, I've given the flourish the embossing powder treatment, using some of the Ranger Weathered White powder, so it has a lovely texture to it.

The background is done on one of my canvas ATCs from my eclectic Paperie DT stash.












I spritzed it with some Espresso Color Wash which I'd diluted with some water in a mini-mister, and then used Coffee Archival to stamp part of a Tattered Angels flourish I love.  

I stuck the canvas to some card for strength (it comes sticky-backed), and frayed the edges.  I was going for a sort of aged fabric look with the spritzing and fraying.









The words are stamped using my Hero Arts alphabet, and then trimmed with a pair of decorative scissors, so that there's a sort of flourish on the edges too.












The flower is one of several I made a week or so ago - some have appeared on an Artistic Outpost project which I hope to share here later today, and some made it on to my mother's birthday card - also not yet blogged.  

I stuck patterned and stamped paper onto acetate, then gently heated it until it was slightly pliable.  Since it was just old packaging, I had to be pretty quick with my moulding, as it doesn't stay soft for very long - don't burn your fingers if you try it!







So there's an actual 3D flourish, and there's also the metaphorical flourishing of growth - either of plants or of oneself... And I'm sure there are other ways you could also interpret the challenge.  


I do hope you'll play along - all the details, as well as lots more inspiration, can be found at Fun With ATCs. Can't wait to see what you come up with...


Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish.
William Blake





Oh - almost forgot! - here's a sneak peek of a project you can see over at the Artistic Outpost blog today, and watch this space for another AO piece right here later today...  It's all go round here at the moment!!

It's a project that's very apt for the time pressures at present!  See you soon...