Secret Things

Hello all!  I don't seem to be doing very well at finding spare time at the moment, but I did have a little Oxide background play and came up with this tag as a result.

Also, as promised, I have a couple of photos for you of my travelling craft stash, all set out ready to play on my day off, Sunday.

Let's take a look at the tag first though.

I was just feeding my crafting itch with a little wrinkle-free distress smooshing of Distress Inks and Oxides in combination, and this green secret garden tag is the first of the several resulting backgrounds to get any further.

















The fabulous meadow grass flowers are by Rubber Dance, and are stamped in Olive Green Archival over the inky background.
















The little girl is from one of the newer releases of Paper Dolls, picked up at Michaels, here in New York.  (I've not dared order them online because it's often not clear whether you're getting the new set or not.)

I just love the directness of her gaze.












She's perched on a "rope swing" - a.k.a. some natural twine - and there's some tissue tape forming shadows underneath.












The same twine forms the topping.  I like to keep things simple sometimes.















I just love these grasses... you'll be seeing more of them.  And of course there are other lovely ones in the set too - very glad I decided to bring them with me for their first inking!














Of course, I couldn't come to New York without some of my quote stamps - this one is from EAB03 Music & Silence.












The quote is also stamped in Olive Archival, and Rainer Maria Rilke gets the credit for his words down in the bottom corner of the tag.
















I roughed up the edges of the tag, and added a penwork border and some white spatter to finish things off.










So, to the workspace.  Here are my supplies laid out around a couple of craft mats.  I'm very fortunate in this apartment to have a beautiful wooden table large enough to leave the craft space operational as well as have space for my laptop and also to eat.  Couldn't be better.  (I was here last year, and asked to come back to the same place if it was possible... happily, it was.)

As you can see, I brought some mini Distress Inks and a few carefully selected Oxides with me (and I do have the new ones on order to arrive with me here shortly).  And over to the left, my tin of watercolours is sitting on top of some pads of paper bought at Blicks since arriving.  There are some watercolour pencils too, and pens, brushes and plastic palette knives all organised into glasses from the kitchen.  And my US heat tool was a must-bring item.





The table is right next to a large window, with a nice broad windowsill where the overflow craft supplies - Archival inks and gesso, for instance - sit very happily.


There's a selection of stamps to the right (including, as I said, several of my own EAB word sets), along with a Midori-style journal and small Moleskine art journal.









In this useful basket I have some blank tags, stencils, word stickers, various embossing powders and mediums, tissue tapes, an old book to tear pages out of, and a few more stamps.

It's very hard to know which stamps you might want for eleven weeks away from home!











You can see some of the other Oxide/Ink backgrounds ready to play with on the mats...













... and here's a close-up of that little sketch, which I made with a dipping pen and some walnut ink.

I rather like this pair of village gossips... I'm sure they're talking about all sorts of secret things, but my guess is the girl from the tag would rather be alone than hear the kinds of secrets they're sharing!








Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I really will try to repay some of your lovely visits soon, but, as always, I am so deeply immersed in the creative processes of the rehearsal room that I'm pretty shattered by the end of each day.  Still, there will be catching up time at some point, and I always love finding out what you've all been up to in the meantime.  Happy crafting all!

Those who cannot keep their own secrets ought not to be entrusted with the secrets of others.
William Scott Downey