The air is full of sunlight

Hello all... some things to be happy about today.

It really has been the most gloriously sunny week here in the south-east of England.  It's wonderful as a lift to the mood, but it makes it quite hard to come to terms with what is happening everywhere.

We've been prepping troughs and planting seeds, in the hope that there will be some fresh garden produce to add to the food store in the weeks to come.

The spring weather has made being in the tiny courtyard a pleasure - I'm so thankful we have some outside space of our own - and the busy road we live just by has been that little bit quieter, which is a big improvement... for the worst of all possible reasons, though, of course.















Still, it's the positive mood instilled by the spring sunshine which has made its way onto this tag.  I promised when I shared my Spring Greens journal page that there would be some more springtime creations, didn't I?  And this isn't the last of them by any means.















This started as another mop-up tag (there are always lots of them hanging around on the craft table).  There's some Peeled Paint, Bundled Sage, Tumbled Glass and Stormy Sky involved - inks and/or Oxides of each.













Some time later on I added some more of the blue tones, as most of them had got covered up, but for now I did some stamping with my Field Notes and Entomology stamp sets.











The labels and postmarks are stamped in Watering Can Archival.

And the repeat stampings of the insect were done in Pumice Stone and clear-embossed for that light-capturing magic.













I gathered a few ephemera from the Field Notes pack as well as some homemade versions done with the stamp set (the bird and the flower book page fragments).

Those homemade ones are left over from another project which you'll get to see at about this time next week... (tease!)

(Sorry for the weird lighting on this one - crafting by night, so it's the daylight bulb.)











I did a bit of doodled framing on the ephemera with my dip pen and some white acrylic ink.













And I used the same pen and ink to add similar scribbled frames around the edge of the tag.















My favourite Rubber Dance tendrils are twining their way (in Leaf Green Archival ink - Weed Love is the name of the stamp set) around the background too.














And the delicate wooden Scrapiniec grass stem seemed the perfect choice to layer over the top of all that.  It's had a gentle wash of gesso to make it even more pale and delicate.

(These grasses definitely bring out my palest side... you may remember the Windswept Grasses from a couple of years back.)













One of the Idea-ology acetate butterflies takes pride of place.  I brushed gesso onto the back of her wings to make them more visible against the background.













You still get the glimmer of the acetate from the front.  And that's a little Game Spinner forming the body, as you probably know.

Some words... naturally.  These are from the Clippings stickers.  Somehow the necessary phrases always just seem to leap out.














And yes, despite everything that's happening, the world is still a beautiful place.  I only have to look out of my window at the trees and flowers and listen to the birdsong to be sure of that...







... or watch some of the uplifting videos of shared singing and music from the balconies and streets of Italy, Spain and around the world, or the applause from those same balconies as the hospital staff and health workers come and go on their changes of shift.

The next weeks and months are going to be about finding happiness and calm where we can... and this tag does that for me.  There's a lightness and gentleness about it which bring me joy.

I hope it will do something of the same for you, and that you are finding ways to make the quarantine gentler on your spirit.

Take care and I'll see you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

This too shall pass.
Persian proverb





I'd like to share this at Tag Tuesday where the springtime theme is Bunnies and Butterflies.  I'm not sure whether you have to have both of them present, but I'm hoping either one or the other will do...
And it's another entry for Anything Goes with an optional twist of Green at the More Mixed Media Challenge - what can I say, I like green!
At the Mix It Up Challenge Blog the theme is Anything Goes with an optional twist of Smooshing - well that's the background in a nutshell, so...
The Sisterhood of Crafters are hosting the perfect challenge theme for this tag - Spring

Springtime happiness bonus extra

Here are a few photos of the plum blossom in the garden today.  Exquisite.  And it's worth clicking on to see them full size, though I do say so myself!  Again, I'm so grateful to have some outside space, even though it's small.