The Golden Hours of Time

Hello all, thanks so much for dropping in today.  I realised when I shared my Seed of Happiness hanging over the weekend that I haven't yet come good on my promise to show you more details of some of my samples for the new PaperArtsy releases.  The hanging used some of the fabulous Sara Naumann Eclectica range, and so I thought I'd follow that up with a different hanging I made for the showboards.  

Sara's stamps are fabulously word-oriented, perfect for adding to journalling pages, and as texture in backgrounds.  For this piece, though, they are right at the centre of the action - creating a vintage style postcard, message and all!

All the stamps used here came from one set, the poetically named ESN05 (that would be Eclectica Sara Naumann number 5).




I love epistolary memorabilia and ephemera (there's a phrase for you - in translation: stuff to do with letter-writing!), and this set offers up plenty to play with.

I started with the gorgeous Carte Postale stamp.











Then I ruled a line down the centre, and added the "letter" to the left of it, and some postmarks, and then started playing around with the other stamps.












It wasn't long before they revealed a message to me - for which I just had to fill in a few gaps with handwritten additions.  

Everything is stamped in Archival ink - Coffee and Black blended onto the stamps, giving nice fluctuating tones.









I then gave the whole thing a good old distressing with Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Gathered Twigs.  The paper distresser played a part, as did lots of rolling, ripping, creasing and inking.













The background is my much-loved, much-employed favourite, corrugated cardboard (recycled packaging), inked and embossed with some Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder.











I layered in some old lace doilies, and added some of the paper flowers from The Range.












These also got some distressing with the brown DIs (as did the little mulberry paper roses), as well as a coating of Rock Candy dry glitter for some subtle vintage bling.











I added eyelets at the top, and dribbled some alcohol ink onto them to knock back their somewhat brash golden appearance, and then simply threaded some ribbon through to hang the whole thing up by.

It was such fun to create, and was entirely inspired by the stamps - making my life really very easy!


You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.
J.M.Barrie


More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
John Donne


What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters.  You can't reread a phone call.
Liz Carpenter



I'd like to enter this into the following:
Simon Says Stamp and Show where the theme this week is Chic to be Shabby