Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas Number 3 - Take 3 Kings

Welcome to Magpieheaven! I am still enjoying my journey through Linda Coughlin's 12 Tags of Christmas, the details of which you can find here. There is still time to enter, as Linda has extended the deadline to January 8 and adding two extra 'thank you' tags: if you complete the Challenge you could win the draw, or discounts on products from the Funkie Junkie Boutique - click here for details of all the goodies on sale. The tag that inspired me today can be found here and it's Linda's #3. Before I entered the Challenge I admired this beautiful tag and some of the superb interpretations of it. I loved the billowing robes of the angel and the silhouette of the Magi , and Linda's starry background, which must have been even more gorgeous in real life! But I have no Wise Men in my small collection of stamps; only one very tiny angel and - I thought - no stars! This was going to be quite a challenge! What I do have, though, is a 'Lost Coast' image that suggests 'angel' to me.
We don't know, for sure, how the Angel who appeared to the Wise Men in their dreams might have looked. In Wim Wenders' beautiful movie, 'Wings of Desire' the angels watch over the city of Berlin, passing by unnoticed in their dark overcoats, listening to the thoughts of the commuters on the metro as they go about their daily lives. In every age ideas of angels have changed:  maybe angels pass through the crowds in busy cities with messages to share if we are willing to listen, or step in to lend a hand when life is tough! Here are my winged messengers and my take on Linda's tag.

I wanted to create the idea of the sweep of the Angel as it fluttered down to intervene in the human world, so I painted some card with Paper Artsy Fresco Finish in Antarctic and Mermaid and then stamped the same Lost Coast image on it with different inks and paint: Cornflower Wendy Vecchi Archival Ink, South Pacific Fresco clear embossed and silver embossing. I frantaged over parts of the wings to suggest a touch of snow  as the Angel flutters down. For my background I used Baltic Blue Fresco with three snowflakes from the Snowy Woods plate embossed with Wow white embossing powder. and a sprinkling of Wow to suggest snow.

There are also three punched out snowflakes. On each of my card snowflakes there is a sprinkling of a little embossing powder to symbolize gold, frankincense and myrrh, the gifts the Wise Men brought. The white snowflakes are to suggest the Magi themselves. If you remember I said that 'I thought' I had no stars...but right at the bottom of my box of bits I found these little blue and silver stars.

Finally I added this sentiment from the 'Snowy Woods' plate. I stamped in Wendy Vecchi Potting Soil Archival onto my card painted with Antarctic and Mermaid. I would like to have used the beautiful 'Noel' from Linda's tag, but I had nothing remotely like this. This quote from Frost's poem reminded me of the long journey the Magi took just to see a tiny child born of obscure parents. They kept their promise to the Angel too, returning a different way so as to avoid disclosing the child's whereabouts to Herod. My tag, then, looks very different to Linda's yet the same inspiration, the Journey of the Magi has led me on a quite different visual journey. Thank you, once again, Linda for this challenge, which has me digging deep into my stash and into my imagination! And thank you, my visitors for dropping by at this busy time.