Spring Fungi

Hello all!  Squeezing in a very quick post and a tag I wasn't sure would fit in this month, but Saturday is play day, right?  And I had a play with Tim's fabulous April tag inspiration and came up with this...


I haven't many stamps which are for "colouring in", so the major departure from Tim's tag is the choice of image.  I used the Stampotique Giant Shroom, but other than that I followed Tim's instructions pretty much to the letter.


So there won't be much how-to-ing here - you'd do much better to hop over and see what the man himself has to say...















I started out with soft neutrals, keeping my fungi in gentle tones of brown, but it all seemed a bit autumnal and melancholy.  Instead, I switched to my springtime preference for vivid blues and greens - Salty Ocean, Mowed Lawn, Peeled Paint and Mermaid Lagoon are all in the mix - creating some distinctly different fungi!













There's still plenty of Vintage Photo, Tea Dye and Old Paper involved in the colouring too... And Tumbled Glass in the background, along with the Pumice Stone shading suggested by Tim.

I don't have any of the Block lettering dies, so went with a double handwriting look for the words.

The blue-green "beautiful" is cut from some of the leftovers from my recent butterfly tag feast.












The advantage of having an obsession about a particular colour palette is that the leftovers from one project will often work beautifully with the next!













I don't have any of the little stars, but I picked out some pewter Idea-ology flowers and stained them with Mushroom Alcohol Ink.













Because of the positioning of the panel, I needed an extra flower up at the top by the ribbons too.









And the final cheat is that I haven't been anywhere near a sewing machine (I have a long and troubled history with them - it's better that we don't have contact these days!).

Following a tip from the fantastic Jenny of Pushing the Right Buttons on one of her TV demo slots lately, I used a tracing wheel (it's a sewing tool - if you Google it you'll get an image) to create the holes, and then joined them up with a fine marker.  From a distance you probably wouldn't know the difference.









Thanks for stopping by.  I'm aiming to be doing some hopping around (in between birthday celebrations - it was mine on Friday and it's my brother's on Sunday), so I'll see you out there somewhere.  Hope you're all having a lovely weekend!

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Eleanora Duse

I'd like to enter this as my April Tag in Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2015

P.S. There's still time to join in my little GIVEAWAY - if you'd like me to put your name in the hat, just pop along and say so!