Naturally Neutral

Hello all and welcome to another neutral day here at Words and Pictures.  I'm still not in the mood for colour, but luckily these vintage neutrals are perfect to take on A Vintage Journey with me.  The new challenge starting there today is hosted by the wonderful Jennie, and she would like us to get Back to Nature.  We want you to celebrate natural elements in your project.  Think real nature in terms of twigs, dried flowers, shells or pebbles, or perhaps stamps and stencils depicting these wonderful elements.

You can find all the challenge details as well as some glorious inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides if you hop over to A Vintage Journey, but first let's get Back to Nature right here.  Well, I don't know about "back" to nature - I never seem to be very far away from it in my crafting these days, so here's the trio of neutral natural tags I've created.

I haven't been able to track down any photos of the first stages of these tags.  I know I started them in NYC, which means it was back in February or March.  I wanted to have a little play with the (at that time new-ish) Memorandum Paper Stash, which I bought over there.





So I glued some of my favourite old paper sections onto three tags, and gave them a swoosh of watered-down gesso.  And then they stalled...  until this time last week when I pulled them out of the pile of bits and bobs on my desk and started to play with some stamps and dried flowers on top of them.

This is not the first time I've used this combination, but it makes me just as happy now as it did when I created this Imagine Simplicity tag back in February 2016.  There's just something about these flower stems which makes my heart sing.  I guess in some ways they are like white paint spatters in 3D!










The Memorandum papers have a soft golden-pink glow to them (from the aged papers and yellowing tape in the images), like the eerie light you sometimes get at dawn... so I thought I'd like some dew drops in the mix.

I added droplets of DecoArt Liquid Glass to each tag.  Here they are immediately after application, still opaque while wet.














And here they are once they've dried... completely clear, so they reflect the colour of whatever piece of old paper they happen to be sitting on.














You can even see the white spatter and the text through them.














Other than that, I've really kept things very simple here... neutral, gentle, with maybe just a touch of melancholy...















- and an occasional whirl of chaos through the middle.









Thinking about it, that's exactly the mood I've been in.  These tags come straight from my subconscious, I think.

If you've read my recent posts, you'll know it's been that way since I got back from my latest work trip.  I expect there'll be some colour again soon, but I'm not going to push it if it's not feeling right.

There's a Quote Chip on each tag - I was slightly limited by size and by wanting the same font on each of them.














But they're all good words.  Must have words!

(For a fascinating glimpse at a bird which uses its wings better than most - with a miniature version of a nest and all - check out Cestina's Dollshouses today.)

I mounted them over a mess of cotton thread - the tangled randomness feels right at the moment.














The metal Typed Token on each tag has had a touch of Mushroom alcohol ink.














It gives a lovely distressed effect.  And you can see the embossed stamping of the meadow grasses here really clearly too.  











The flowers are stamped in Archival and embossed with Wow Bark embossing powder - a really dark brown.

These really are three of my all-time favourite stamps.  Two of them are Tim Holtz images, and one is by Penny Black.















And I love how the dried flower stems echo them three-dimensionally.















You'll have spotted one of the Entomology insects crawling around the tags - another little touch of nature.















I roughened the edges of the tags with the blade of my scissors, and doodled some border frames.  And there's some cream coloured woolly twine to top them off.










I hope you'll be inspired to get Back to Nature and join us on A Vintage Journey this month.  As always, there's more delightful inspiration from my fellow Creative Guides if you hop over to take a look.

Thank you, as ever, for your company on this crafting journey.  There are big changes in the offing over the next year or so.  If you read the tagline for this blog, you'll see some of the plans I had six years ago when I started Words and Pictures... well, they're finally turning into more solid reality.  There's a long way to go yet, but there are even bigger crafting adventures calling to me.  I hope you'll continue to come along for the ride!

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Albert Einstein

I'd like to share this trio at Stamps and Stencils where they're having a sort of anything goes theme called It's been a while...  If you read their challenge details, you'll see these tags fit right in - with that long gap needed for my creative spirit to wander before it returned to let these tags take shape
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they are celebrating Stamptember by inviting us to Stamp It On
While we're at it, let's celebrate Stamptember at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge too - where the invitation is to Stamp On It - do you see what they did there?!
And I'm being a little cheeky but, with all that tangled cotton thread, I'm going to join in with the Haberdashery theme at Frilly and Funkie, just because I do like to play there!
I'd also like to play along at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog where, as always, Anything Mixed Media Goes - this should fulfil their requirement for multiple mediums with gesso, ink, embossing powders, alcohol ink, pen work, and Liquid Glass
I'd also like to join in with the party at Simply Neutrals #48