Magpie Pyramid Challenge!

Blogging has been proving a bit of a puzzle for my bird-brain, I'm afraid! Three kind people have tried to 'follow' me (in a blogging way - not in the street, you understand!) and I just can't find out how to enable the 'followers'' button. Ah well, I shall have to turn to superior brains for some help. To cheer myself up I thought I would play along with the @Paper Artsy challenge this week. Linda Cain has been doing some amazing work with Fresco paints, modelling paste and crackle glaze. Her bird-house and tag look so beautiful and professional, like all her work, really creative and a visual feast! I have no Grunge paste (yet) -I'm saving my shiny pennies for that plus the new Lynne Perrella Asian themed stamps. For my project I used Fresco paints: Rose, Victorian Lace, Claret, Sky, Ice Blue and a touch of Beach Hut and Old Gold. I played with Crackle glaze, some Spanish Topaze Treasure Gold, Paper Artsy and Lynne Perrella stamps and some collage sheets and Dresden foil and butterfly cut-outs from @Retro Cafe Art Gallery. I had one of the Retro Cafe pyramid exploding boxes and somehow that said 'Harlequin' to me so I set about decorating it with a Venetian theme.

 I painted the outside triangles in Snowflake Fresco as a base and then two with Claret and the other two with Sky. I then used the Harlequin stencil on the Sky ones, dabbing Claret on with a Sponge then shifting the stencil slightly over to one side and dabbing with Ice Blue. I embellished these with blue Retro Cafe cut-out butterflies. Then I edged the Claret triangles with Treasure Gold. I used a couple of frames that come with the Tim Holtz tag die, painting them with a layer of Claret, a thin layer of Crackle glaze applied with an old knife and a layer of Ice Blue. I dabbed just a little Treasure Gold on the edges. The masked ladies and butterflies are again Retro Cafe Art collages and cut-outs. I accented the frames with tiny topaz stones.

 For the inner section I harlequin stencilled again, this time using Ice Blue, Beach-hut and Victorian Lace. The other two triangles are Rose and Claret with little cut-out playing cards (digital downloads) and script in Distress Ink in mahogany.

I then flipped over the pyramids and decorated with Claret stamped with Archival ink, the label from the Ink and the Dog pierrot set, some script using Rose Fresco (immediately washed off the stamp, of course!) and a Stampington ticket stamp from the Butterfly Girl set. The other two sides are pierrots from Paper Artsy Ink and the /Dog, stamped on Crackly tissue and painted and stuck on to the Sky background with Satin Glaze.
The centre is painted with a mixture of Sky and Victorian Velvet. The script is in Peacock Feathers Distress Ink and the butterfly, roses and crown are Retro Cafe Art Gallery. The two postage stamp cut-outs are Lynne Perrella stamps which I drew my own masks on in black fineline pen.

I loved drawing on those masks! The little leaves are made by punching out Fresco painted card with a Woodware punch.

To attach the corners I made a Tim Holtz rose from Claret and Rose on Shiny Paper Artsy card. I stuck this to a cocktail stick painted with Old Gold and finished with narrow claret ribbon. This ribbon is part of a vast magpie hoard of ribbon and lace I buy from Dennis who has a wonderful haberdashery stall in my local market!

Here it is semi-finished!

I was really pleased with the way the Lynne Perrella stamps worked with the whole thing that I took a detail shot.

Here is the box all ready to open with a surprise inside maybe?

Ooh yes, and I forgot - I lined the base with some Graphic 45 paper before I stuck down the inner part of the pyramid!

Here is the rather mysterious, witchy lady on the other side!

And what was Daisy, the cat up to while all this activity was going on?

And she's usually so eager to help too! Well, all this sun we've been having has no doubt worn her out!

This pyramid was such fun to make I completely lost the headache I'd developed from frustration over that Followers' button. Have a lovely day anyone who might be reading this and thanks for stopping by.