A Glimmer in the Earth

Hello all!  I'm squeezing this in by the skin of my teeth.  Things are stupidly busy for me at the moment, with requests and deadlines flying in from seventeen different directions, but I simply can't bear to miss a Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey... I never have so far, and so here I am.

In fact, I have a pair of tags for you, with a shimmer of light gleaming amidst the earthy colour tones.  These were actually made a while back, while showing a friend how to apply gilding foil to a project.  So they weren't pre-planned in any way, and where they ended up was pretty much entirely a surprise to me.






It's as they move in the light that you suddenly catch the real gleam of the foil - it's a pretty magical effect.  I really must try to use the stuff more often!













It's just going to a be a quick post (for me), as I really haven't time for an epic... and also there really aren't any process photos, as the process was focussed on sharing ideas and techniques, not on recording what we were doing.













There's some Tim Holtz design paper in the background, stuck down onto a regular manila tag, leaving a slight border.













Which stash it's from is anybody's guess.  Someone out there will know...

















And then there's some roughly brayered gesso over that...















... along with some credit-card-applications of (probably) Hey Pesto Fresco paint from PaperArtsy.













We used a glue stick to apply the foil - delicately in some places, a little more heavy-handedly in others.














The flower silhouettes are stamped and embossed in Wow Primary Bark powder.















They're both from a set by Inkylicious which I picked up for a song the last time I managed to get myself to Ally Pally.















The quotes are done the same way.  They're both from my own EAB Eclectica stamp sets at PaperArtsy, as you probably know if you spend any time here.  This one is from EAB03 Music & Silence...















... and this one is from EAB01 Trees & Flowers.











I added some partial stampings of the same quotes in green, but that seems to have slightly vanished in the finished versions... clearly, it wasn't Archival ink!

In close up, you can see there's plenty of spatter, and some fairly unsuccessful faux stitching.













There's some more embossing powder around the edges to draw the eye inward, and some dark twine tops them both off.








So that's your lot for now.  Hop over and catch some more Tag Friday action from my brilliant fellow Creative Guides at A Vintage Journey.  I love seeing what everyone makes when they're simply let loose to play.

My apologies that I'm such a poor blog visitor at the moment - there will come a time when I do some proper catching up, I promise.  In the meantime, thank you so much for your continued company.  Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
From The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins