Dreamy

I was delighted when I saw a couple of the latest challenges out and about in Blogland - lots of themes concerning April Showers and May Flowers, and maybe best of all, Words!  I love script stamps, and had a few new ones I wanted to use. And I finally managed to get my hands on the new Tim Holtz Tiny Tattered Flowers wafer dies.  At last, maybe I would be able to make a decent flower, lol!!

I was inspired by a beautiful tag I purchased from the talented Linda Coughlin of the Funkie Junkie Boutique, where she used the new Lindy Stamp Gang's Nantucket Pearls Starburst sprays. to wonderful effect.

These sprays have the most wonderful silver shimmer against beautiful pastel colors....very different from my usual palette of bright!

As I wanted to enter this make into the Artistic Stamper's Journal your heArRT Out challenge, I started with a journal page in mind.  I also wanted to enter the latest Paper Artsy Topic 9 Words challenge, so knew I wanted to start with script stamping, and keep things as translucent as possible so the words would show up!  

So I started by spraying a sheet of rather heavy cardstock with the blue spray from the Nantucket set.  I let dry, and resprayed several times to get lots of different patterns from the silver.

I then stamped with two stamps I have from the French stamp maker Aladine..... One is a long narrow manuscript stamp, and the other is more along the lines of a post-card.  I stamped them both in Wendy Vecchi's Hydrangea archival ink, in keeping with the blue theme.

I knew I wanted to use a large favorite flourish stencil from Michelle Ward.   Now, how to tackle the transparency I wanted to preserve?

I was rather pleased when I came up with the idea of using clear gesso.....

and only after the fact realized that the gesso, although clear when dry, would actually provide tooth to any subsequent spray.....thus eliminating the look I wanted (words through the flourish parts).  Ah well, isn't art a process of discovery anyway?  May as well figure out what it was going to look like.  And pressed for time (I leave for Nicaragua for a week on University business in two days), however it turned out would have to do!!  The gesso I used was from Prima (Finnabair) and very loose, so my stenciling was actually pretty sloppy.

I turned to one of the Dylusions Dyes, After Midnight, as I love the rich, deep, velvety blue it yields, and sprayed heavily in several subsequent spray-dry-spray routines to get a good amount of color.

Although I love the deep color I ended up with, I rather wish I had stopped after the first go-round, as I ended up losing a lot of the background under the thick layers of consecutive spraying.  On the other hand, it was beginning to look very watery or dreamy..... and could perhaps take me in the vintage direction.

I turned next to making the flowers..... I used a few Donna Salazar spiral rose dies from Spellbinder to get the larger sizes, as the Tiny Tattered Florals are not kidding - they are tiny!!  The measurements below are centimeters.

I cut the flowers from card spritzed with the pink and coral sprays from the Nantucket set, and this time sprayed both sides.  And to my surprise, I soon had a plethora of roses!  

Not the most beautiful, but certainly acceptable, and a darned sight better than I've been doing, lol!!  I later grunged them  up with some Victorian Velvet Distress Ink, though the subsequent photos don't really show that too well.

And so back to the page..... I ended up using a new (to me) stamp from Visible Image, and embossing it with copper embossing powder.  I originally thought about vellum, but I didn't like how it distracted from the background.  And if you look really closely, you can still see some of the manuscript stamping in the background.....

Here is the finished page, and some closeups of the roses.

I will be entering this into Paper Artsy's Words challenge, Artistic Stamper's Journal your heART out challenge, A Vintage Journey's Spring Colors challenge, Mixed Media Monthly's May Flowers challenge, Our Creative Corner's April Showers Bring May Flower's challenge, Mixed Media World's Vintage challenge, and of course, Brenda's Visual Journey #20 blog party.  

Thanks for stopping by, and if you've time, please leave a comment!  I love hearing from you!!

xx Lynn

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