A time and a place

Hello all!  Sorry it all went quiet again there for a week or so - life, you know!  Thank you for all your amazing comments about Sunrise, Sunset - I'm glad it made you as happy as it did me.  I'm back with a couple of quick shots of extra happiness for this weekend.  These happy tags are samples from my latest stamp launch with PaperArtsy in September, and use quotes from EAB14 The Happiness Edition.  I'll share one today and one on Sunday, all being well.

For the background here, I've been doing my watery brayering technique again and, as you can probably see, this one was done at a stage where the water was really the main ingredient on the craft mat, with just a hint of paint.  But still the Aquamarine, Sky Blue and Cheesecake colours create some lovely effects I think.









This lovely girl from Hot Picks 1008 popped straight into my head when I was thinking about stamps to use with the Happiness quotes.  Could there be a more joyful, contented expression on anyone's face?













And I've always loved the fact that within the collage around the girl, there's a tiny echo of one of my all-time favourite PaperArtsy stamps, these wonderful grassy stems from HP1005.  (I used it in one of my first ever projects as a designer for PaperArtsy, back in 2013!)











For the quote itself, I used a paintbrush to create an ombre of Aquamarine, Sky Blue and a touch of Lawn, and I embossed some Wow Vanilla White over an Archival stamping.













As I've mentioned before, I find that stamping with Archival gives me a finer imprint than an embossing ink, which is great for a detailed stamp.  You do have to be a little quicker about getting the powder onto the ink, but it's perfectly do-able.













Most of the rest of the stamping is done in Olive Archival, always a favourite of mine.  But for the girl I also added some Watering Can to part of the stamp for a slight ombre effect there too.






I sponged on some Lawn followed by Olive Archival around the edges to draw the eye inwards, mounted the tag on some white card for a nice framing border and some simple white twine finishes things off.

There... a nice short post for you.  I'll be back on Sunday with some more happy grasses, so I'll hope to see you then, but either way I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison

I'd like to share this over at Tag Tuesday where Michele's theme this fortnight is Seeds and Plants.