Crafty Individuals Sponsor Spotlight II

Hello all, Alison here with another Sponsor Spotlight celebrating this month's generous sponsors, Crafty Individuals.

I had a lovely time playing with the beautiful Wild Flowers and Butterflies stamp...

... and the gorgeous Dancing Dragonflies masks.

This wasn't at all what I had in my head when I started, but I do quite like where it ended up.

And I'm giving you two views straight away since this is one of those makes where the lighting is all... now you see them, now you don't!

I started with an inky background with plenty of splattery texture, graduating in my usual way from greens to blues, earth to sky.

I stamped the lovely Wild Flowers in Olive Archival ink along the foot of the tag.

Then I used the masks as a stamp too.  I daubed various colours of Luminarte Silks onto the masks and then pressed them down onto my tag.

(The bonus is that I also have a really cool bit of leftover card where I did the daubing!)

The Silks have loads of shimmer to them, so there was already a fair amount of dragonfly iridescence, but I wanted more!

Specifically, I wanted the whole of the dragonfly wings to shimmer, not just the outlines, so I played with washes of pale Shimmerz colours and with diluted Liquid Pearls used as a paint...

... until I had the iridescent look I was after for my dragonflies.  You can really see that the wings are "coloured in", and are different from the background behind, but they remain translucent.  And then when the sun hits them at the right angle... bingo!

I added an Idea-ology Word Band in the centre of the meadow grasses, altered with the same Silks paints.  And I mounted the whole tag onto a Prima pre-printed tag from one of their Tag Pads, and trimmed it to fit.

There was a happy accident with the topping... this gauzy ribbon did something really weird with the Silks.  I promise there was nothing approaching purple in the shades I used, they were all blues and greens, but look what I got - pretty perfect for the dragonfly look, I suppose.

So those are my shimmering dragonflies for you. 

I hope you like them darting and dazzling in the summer sky...

... above the meadow grasses, gently waving in the breeze.  That ought to awaken the soul, no?

If that's inspired you, then come and play along in Linda's Love Those Leftovers challenge this month.  You could be in with a chance of winning a wonderful prize package from Crafty Individuals, and we'd love to see you there.

See you soon!

Alison x