Red, Text and Embellishment - here goes!

There just weren't enough hours in the day to dream with the Dragons last time, as it was a hectic race to help my students with some last minute revision before their exams! Now I've a little more time so I'm trying out Helen's recipe of Red, Book Pages/Text and Embellishment. If you would like the details of the TIO Dragons Dream challenge just click here. I decided to explore Medieval text for my tag. I love illuminated books so I distressed some old Christmas wrap with illuminations and some Gothic text on it, using Distress Inks, Aged Mahogany and Walnut Stain. These I pasted onto some die-cut page dividers. Here are the bits and pieces in the early stages, which included a Sizzix Tim Holtz tag die painted with Paper Artsy Frescos in Pumpkin Soup, Butternut, Vintage Lace, London Bus and lots of Blood Orange.

I stamped this with a beautiful Paper Artsy, Lynne Perrella medieval lady who  has some text around her too. I painted some of the detail on her with Frescos: Beach Hut and Zesty Zing and stamped some Tudor style text along the top right, using Aged Mahogany; I later added more of this random stamping without a block to create an irregular, aged effect. You can also see a scrap of distressed seam binder coloured with Aged Mahogany; the Tim Holtz sentiment stamp I planned to use and a Tim Holtz tattered pine cone cut from some painted card that I planned to make into my embellishment.

I then edged my tag with some Aged Mahogany. I added the foliage from the TH tattered pine cone, decorated the pine cone rose with some Treasure Gold White Fire and then the fun part - if you're a bit of a pyromaniac ! I singed some grey gauze which I also coloured with Aged Mahogany and some white gauze with embroidered feathers with my heat gun: I was ve-ry careful not to singe my feathers. This is a technique I saw used by Darcy Wilkinson when she guested at Paper Artsy and I've been dying to try it out. These distressed fabrics have been used to trim around the rose and along the edge of the tag. If you click on the images you can see in more detail, but here is a close-up of the singed gauze to show you what I mean.

I embossed a fern in sparkly red and added this Tim Holtz sentiment to my red text illumination tag, along with some tiny punched out leaves, covered in White Fire.

Thank you, Dragons for giving me this opportunity to dream along with you! I missed playing along so much last time. Now I'm off to look at the other lovely tags created in response to this recipe.