Dragons Dream TIO #184

The challenge this fortnight over at Dragons Dream Tag It On is to use the colour Orange and a Letter. Orange is a having a wee bit of a revival in my world right now so I was pretty happy with the colour choice.

I had fun making the background with Liquidtex Acrylic and Ink in orange tones, dripping, misting and splattering.  I use a spray from Lindy’s Stamp Gang to colour the paper butterfly, which had started life as plain white.  The large letter “B” was hiding in my stash so all that was required was the stamping of the butterfly trail and the words.  Simple but effective.

Cheers

Esther

Dragons Dream TIO #183

This fortnight the challenge was to use Red and Flowers.  The usual rule of using at least one real stamp applies too.

Being of the school of “Refuse to do the Obvious” (Red Roses)  I set about making this challenge harder than it had to be.

I downloaded a great Silhouette shape of a young lady with flowers in her hair to start with as a base.  I cut it to use as a stencil first and foremost but the negative of the entire shape proved useful too.  Probably more so really.

I started by painting my tag red, then stamped a script text stamp through a honeycomb stencil to create my background.  I then masked the with the negative space left from cutting out the shape, filling it in with black gesso mixed with a crackle texture paste.  The crackle didn’t really show very well though.

The next step was to place the cut portrait over the black and add the detail of the roses and butterfly in white texture paste. Hmmm …. didn’t like it all.  Boring and flat.

So – out with the paper flowers and the distress ink pens on the butterfly.  Better. I then added the sentiment stamped in white on black card and cut out the banner (which is just part of the actual stamp).

Still not sold on it, but it’s done.

Thanks for taking a look.  Hopefully my next tag will be a little more exciting.

Cheers, Esther

Real Life

Yes – I have had a bit of that in 2014 and the last half slipped away from me altogether!  I wasn’t my best year despite my intentions.

2015 has started of with hernia surgery and I hope that is the end of my days as as a walking hospital waiting list, lol.

So, back into doing some crafting at long last and I have started with the first Dragons Dream Tag It On challenge for 2015.  The recipe called for Turquoise with Bling, and of course the use of at least one real stamp.

I started with laying down a few strips of scrap paper (9th wave collection from 7 Dots)

 

Then I set to, mixing paints until I was happy with the colour

I slapped on the paint and sprinkled with Magical for added bling, spritzing the powder with water to bring out the colour and the sparkle.

I the distressed the edges and added Walnut Stain Distress Ink.

I then stamped around the edges with a new stitch stamp plus the word LIFE and added chipboard letters from my stash that just happened to be the perfect colour – I love it when that happen,  It justifies having a stash, I say!

I also added some Prima bling from one of the monthly kits ( I have no idea which one though)

Here are a couple of close-ups that show the different textures.

It felt good to get my fingers stained again, I must admit.  Thanks for stopping in to take a look.  I really do appreciate it.

Happy New Year!

Esther