Silent Strength

Hello all!  It's an exciting day over at A Vintage Journey.  Not only is it Tag Friday - always one of my favourite stops on the journey - but we are also welcoming three new Creative Guides on board.


Do hop over there to see the new arrivals as well as all the fantastic tags everyone has created.  You can join in too by sharing any tags you've made this month in our Tag Friday Link-up. 


And remember Tag Friday means you've still got a week to come and join us on our current Book It! challenge too.

















As you'll know from my absences, it's been a busy time behind the scenes here lately, so perhaps it's no wonder that I was drawn to a message of peace and silence for my tag.











The background has been sitting around for a while... another of my playtime Oxide/DI tags, just messing around with layers of colour and spritzes of water droplets.

Over that I stamped the glorious Tim Holtz architecture stamp in one of the many white ink pads I've tried over the years.  It was deliciously subtle, but a little too much so.  (You can still see faint echoes of it in places.)











So I restamped (in Hickory Smoke) and used Bright White Ultra Fine Wow embossing powder to create a bolder white structure amidst the greenery.













I love the texture and the light-catching shine you get with an embossed stamping.















From there, it's really very simple.  Some ivy cut with a Thinlits die out of some Pion design paper (or Maja Designs, maybe)...
















... some of my favourite dried flower stems...
















... a Typed Token altered with alcohol inks and a smear of white paint to highlight the lettering.













And then, of course, there are the words.   They're from one of my earliest PaperArtsy quote collections, EAB03 Music & Silence.














A few ivory sequins dotted around help to catch the light.

And the whole tag is mounted on white card, trimmed to size as a frame to draw the eye inwards.














And some crinkle ribbon tied with fine twine tops everything off up at the head of the tag.






I love the delicate dimension provided by the flower stems, and the intricate lines of the arches behind them.

I didn't really intend the flowers to be sprouting out of the token, but that seems to be the effect.  I supposed they have to grow out of somewhere!








Given the tag was already inky, this really didn't take long to put together.


It was definitely following a deep impulse for peace, gentleness and serenity.


And I think it fulfils that need very well.  It may be simple, but it makes me deeply happy.  I hope you like it too.


I hope you enjoy Tag Friday at A Vintage Journey as much as I do, and I hope you find some peace and silence amidst the hurly burly this weekend. 
















Oh, since you're here... if you missed my Puddles of Paint over at PaperArtsy I'd love it if you had a moment to check them out.  I was rather pleased with how I managed to turn a crazy idea of continuously-pouring-paint into reality!

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll see you again in June.  June... seriously?!  Yup, June!  Happy Crafting all!

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
From the Desiderata by Max Ehrmann





I'd like to play along at Emerald Creek Dares where the theme is Flowers on the Wall
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, they would like us to Frame It.  My framing is a very simple matting and layering, but it's still a frame!