Fungus Fairytale

Hello all.  I hope you are all doing okay and staying safe in these strange times.  I've got a fairly short post for you today (after some mammoth affairs in the last week or so!) to share a couple of the sample tags I made for my last release of quote stamps at PaperArtsy back in February.  It feels like years ago!

This pair of tags uses quotes from the EAB16 Magic & Wonder set... and I figure we can use all the magic and wonder we can get at the moment.

To me, there has always been something fantastical and other-worldly about fungi... they're neither plant nor animal, not flora nor fauna, but a whole order unto themselves.  And some of them behave in very weird and wonderful ways, playing a vital role in all sorts of natural processes without us even being aware of it.

So when I was looking for some stamps to partner the fairies I wanted to use with these particular quotes, the Scrapcosy mushrooms also by PaperArtsy seemed like the perfect choice.













The backgrounds are done very simply by sponging on the Fresco paints with a natural sponge.  You get such lovely soft stippled effects this way.

The colours include Lavender and Wisteria, along with Lawn and Granny Smith.









The fungi are stamped in a combination of Potting Soil and Coffee Archivals and painted in the smoky neutrals of Chalk, Eggshell, Taupe and French Roast.

I used my stamp platform so that I could stamp the mushrooms, paint them in my chosen shades...

... and then stamp again to retrieve all that lovely shading and detail.  It's such a satisfying process!

The fairies are played by Paper Dolls with some of the lovely acetate Idea-ology wings attached.








But these tags are really all about the words for me.  The quotes are embossed in Wow Primary Bark, applied over an Archival ink stamping.  (I find you get slightly better detail with Archival than with a sticky embossing ink when you've got a stamp like this.)

You can't have a quote set about Magic & Wonder without some words from the master of fairytales himself, Hans Christian Andersen.

I'm not sure he's right about a fairytale at the moment - seems like we're in more of a disaster movie a lot of the time!  Still, maybe there'll be a happy ending.











And this extraordinary quote by Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister (Master) Eckhart, a German philosopher born in 1260, has exactly the kind of uplifting optimism I need at the moment.











What if, out of this catastrophic crisis, we were able to imagine and create for ourselves a better way of going about our lives?  Less in thrall to materialism, more in tune with nature; less driven by money, more concerned with compassion.

Suppose we were able to start something new - that would be the start of a happier ending, wouldn't it?













Enough of that for now.  I hope you enjoyed seeing these samples in more detail than I was able to share them on launch night, and I hope you are still finding magic & wonder in this extraordinary world of ours, even in these dark hours.  Stay safe, stay well and I'll see you again soon.













Just a quick fungi-connected afterthought before the quotes... Cross promotion is not something I do very often, but if any of you are fans of science fiction or the wonders of nature - especially the fascination of fungi - or simply like a really good read, can I just draw your attention to a newly published book, Living with Annie, by a very good friend of mine.

If you'd like to know more, click the link and "Look Inside" to read an extract; and if you scroll down to the reviews you'll find one there by someone called "Alison" (!).  If it seems like your kind of thing then I highly recommend it.






When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
John F. Kennedy

In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path - the path of compassion, courage, understanding and love.
Amit Ray

I'd like to share these over at Tag Tuesday where for the next fortnight Anything Goes
At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge they would like us to Create A Scene