Full of bright hopes

Hello all!  Thank you for the lovely feedback on the Useful or Beautiful tiny houses.  I'm glad you liked them as much as I do.

Just a tag for you today, and I'm taking the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge at their word in entering it there.  They say they want A Bit O' Green... well, there is a very little bit of green, but it's what brings the tag to life, I think.

And speaking of life, it feels like spring this morning outside, so I am - as the post title and the tag say - full of bright hopes.

I'll try to keep this pretty short so that we can all enjoy some of the spring sunshine... before it vanishes again (hope is a fragile thing!).













I started by putting some texture paste through this fabulous Gothic stencil by Prima.  (It was the Prima Plaster Paste I think.)














I added a wash of PaperArtsy French Roast paint over it, rubbing it in with a cloth to get a nice textured finish with some movement.














I used a PaperArtsy sanding block to sand back the texture revealing nice white highlights.













Then it was just a question of deciding what should go on top of the background.

This chap was an early candidate who kept demanding to be included.















He's layered over a scrap of book text and some of the fabulous Idea-ology film strip ribbon, and attached with some tiny staples.














The stickers are from a couple of different sets of Idea-ology Clippings - one from the regular collection and one from the Halloween set.













I wonder if you can guess which is from which!  I think the little phrases work well with his expression.














There's a little Type Charm attached at the foot of the photo.  I chose H for him/he to match with the "his"s starting each of the little phrases.














It was all looking a bit gloomy so I grabbed the grassy die-cut stem which was sitting nearby, leftover from or left out of some project or other.














I added some Perfect Pearls detailing to the stamens (stamens?), and some droplets of white paint over the top of that to get a nice textural effect of seed pods or some such.











There's a tangle of simple cotton thread adding a swirl of movement.















Some simple rustic twine, and some scissor-scraping of the edges of the tag and the pale card behind, and we're pretty much done.
















Oh, apart from the white spatter of course...

I hope you're having a great week, and I'll be seeing you soon either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland. 









The promise of spring's arrival is enough to get anyone through the bitter winter.
Jen Selinsky

I'd like to play along at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where they are looking for A Bit O' Green