Happy in her Heart

Hello all, and welcome.  I hope you are all doing okay.  My mojo is still up and down - both creatively and for anything much really.

I've been pouring my creative energy into the Zoom sessions with actors from around the globe, and really enjoying sharing the virtual voicework, but that seems to leave me without much space for other things.

However, I'll always make an exception for a Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey.  There are no rules... just to use a tag and follow your heart, and I suspect that I'm not the only one of the Creative Guides for whom it's a favourite task.

On this occasion, my heart seems to have been ahead of the game colour-wise.  The photos of the background are dated 13th May, a whole week before the brand new Distress Colour was revealed, but somehow I seem to have tuned in to the Speckled Egg vibe a bit early.  There's no actual Speckled Egg involved here... though I do have some on order - irresistible!!










As you'll see, the colours changed from their original look as I was working on the tag... it wasn't really Speckled Eggy to start with, but it all faded to this beautiful shade by the end.













There are plenty of layers to this background, starting with some Fresco chalk paints and Crackle Glaze.  There's Lawn and Beanstalk as the underlayer - here already coated with the Crackle Glaze which has dried, hence the slight sheen.













I painted a combination of Snowflake and Hint of Mint over the top, allowing them to mix on the brush and the tag...













... and let the crackle magic happen.  Somehow, I just never tire of it, whether it's a top glaze crackle or one of these between-paint-layers types.  It's just so satisfying.










Over that I did some dipping and smooshing with various Distress Inks and Oxides in blues and greens.

Tough to say which now - Stormy Sky is in there, and Bundled Sage, but beyond that... your guess is as good as mine!  Maybe Old Paper?









As I mentioned, you can see that the individual colours are quite distinct at this point but as they dried fully later, they ended up in paler tones.















I added some clear embossing powder in places, randomly allowing it to cling to any ink which was still wet enough.













And the last main background layer was a bit of stamping - some Field Notes labels and numbers stamped in Watering Can Archival.
















I fell in love with this Paper Doll the moment I saw her, and I couldn't wait to give her a rope swing to sit on.














It's something I did a couple of years ago with one of my favourite tags - Secret Things  - and I was happy to have the chance to revisit the idea.













She's already got some flowers in the original photograph, but I decided to give her an even better bunch to hold - one of the Field Notes ephemera snippets.













There's lots more ephemera from the Field Notes packs layered up behind the girl...
















... along with some of the delicate wooden grasses by Scrapiniec.













You'll notice there are some butterflies dotted around... three, to be precise.  The rule of three is a good one in visual design as well as verbal rhetoric.













Two of them are in her sketchbook notes, and one is perched in all its delicate beauty, ready to take flight.  (As I usually do, I put a light coat of gesso on the reverse to give it a bit more presence.)













You can be sure she's taking good note of the magic of nature.  Clearly it makes her so happy that she imagines she can hear music as she gazes around her.














All the word stickers are from the Idea-ology Clippings - somehow the right words always seem to bob to the surface just as you need them.













I love that in places you can still get a glimpse of all the scrumptious inky painty crackly layers in the background.

And yes, we're now fully in Speckled Egg territory - that delightful ambivalence between blue and green with a touch of grey to keep things gently wistful.













The twine which provides the girl with her seat is echoed up at the top of the tag for a simple rustic finish.














Distressed edges and some white card behind to create a frame and we're done.















Just look how the embossing on this tag captures the light... and you know that makes me happy in my heart!

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I'm determined to repay some visits this coming weekend, and I'm looking forward to catching up with how you are all finding ways to be creative or simply stay sane at the moment.

One thing sure to inspire you would be a trip over to A Vintage Journey to see what the other Creative Guides have been making for their Tag Friday contributions. 

And if you've been making any tags this month, we'd love you to share them in our Tag Friday link party there too.

Stay safe, stay well, and I'll see you again soon, either here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions.
Mary Webb






At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this week, they are Going Around in Circles - they're subtle, but they're there... in the background stamping and echoed in the metal token
At Crafty Cardmakers they are looking for Butterflies
There's the tiniest delicate blush of pink on those flowers she's holding for the Anything Mixed Media Goes + Optional Pink theme at the More Mixed Media Challenge
At Tag Tuesday the theme is Animals - I'm never sure whether insects count as animals, but I'm sharing this trio of butterflies nonetheless

Happy Hour

Hello all... and welcome to the results of a very happy hour of Skype crafting last weekend.  I didn't have time for a full session, so I suggested that Nikki, Brenda and I could do a "time-limited" quickie.  Last time we embraced the Tim Holtz quote Out of limitations comes creativity, and worked only with limited ingredients, declared in advance, so no chance to change your mind part way through.  This time we would just have an hour to work with but we could play in any way we chose.  I chose ATCs.

I love working with the ATC (Artist Trading Card) format - just 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size - and often work in pairs or sets when I play with them.  I thought a trio should be do-able in an hour and, in fact, apart from time taken to choose exactly the right word stickers, I was done much more quickly than that.





I started with some old playing cards.  I really liked the design on the back, especially after I'd sanded it back to remove some of the glossy finish, and got a softer weathered look as a result.

I mounted them on some waste cardboard to give them a sturdier presence.











There aren't many process photos - no time to stop and click constantly! - so you see them now after 1) a quick brayering of a watery wash of white paint; 2) torn strips of tissue and design tape applied in places; then...












... 3) texture paste applied through a Crafter's Workshop stencil of quavery Latin lettering; and 4) washes of DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylic in Payne's Grey, Raw Umber and Quinacridone Gold, spritzed with extra water to let it run down between and around the letters.

And of course the leftover paint on the craft mat got splattered over the top.












The blue design of the card background pretty much dictated the choice of the rusty browns... 














Give me blue when I'm under pressure and I'm likely to head for my favourite blue and brown combination.















With that scrumptious dribbly rusty Quin Gold paint concoction...














... it was a pretty short step to the addition of some rusty wire, wound round at various heights to create variation across the set.











A quick flip through the Idea-ology Paper Dolls brought these three characters to the fore, and thankfully I had each of them in the appropriate size to fit on the ATCs.

Then it was just a question of positioning them so that they wouldn't cover up too much of the background, but it still needed something else.  

These Scrapiniec stems have been hanging out on the craft table lately.  They almost made it on to my tag, The flowers appear on the earth, but in the end the lavender didn't need any extra support.














They almost put in an appearance on the Catching up journal page, but simplicity won out that time.   But finally, here, their patience was rewarded.














They're made in very pale wood in any case, but they've had a wash of snowflake just to make them even lighter in contrast to the rusty shadows in the background.

As I said, it took me a while to get exactly the right word stickers in place.

But these ones not only seemed to suit the respective Paper Dolls, but as a trio of phrases they also reflect the crafting friendship which was the reason these ATCs came into existence at all.











If we hadn't had the Skype session set up, it's unlikely I'd have got myself to the craft table that day.  So the "lasting friendship", sharing a creative hobby which is "nearest to my heart" (or at least one of two areas of creativity nearest to my heart), definitely makes me happy.











It was a very happy hour spent chatting as we each pursued our own crafty paths, and I hope you'll hop over and take a look at how Nikki and Brenda filled their sixty minutes of time.








These two sneak peeks ought to tempt you, I would think.  You'll find Nikki's project here at Addicted to Art, and Brenda's here at Bumblebees and Butterflies.

The Skype session also nudged me into spending at least a bit of time at the craft table on subsequent days, so the inspiration was ongoing, and you've already seen one result of that with my Daisy, daisy (daisy) painting, and there's more to come soon.

In the meantime, I wish you all well.  Stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you have some happy creative hours of your own in the next few days.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin

With my spritzed and dripping painty background, I'd like to share this trio at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where they are playing with Spritz and Splatter this week
The More Mixed Media Challenge are on Anything Goes + Optional Pink - can't quite take up the option this time, sorry - rust is as close as I can get for now!
Creative Artiste Challenge Blog are, as always, playing Anything Mixed Media Goes

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.