Dragon's Dream TIO

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven, where it's the time to dream with the Dragons again! What amazing tags you created last time - so many glorious images of birds! You'll see I still feature a little bird of freedom on this week's tag! This time the very talented Elizabeth has set us a great challenge! It's always fun to make a tag, but to create one that is not the usual tag shape - well, that's bound to stimulate some imaginative responses! If you pop over to The Dragons Dream here, you'll see some of the ingenious ideas the Design Team have come up with. As usual you need to have at least one stamped image on your tag and you must feature the letter of this fortnight's challenge, which is 'A', otherwise you're free to flap your wings and take off on a flight of fancy with any shape you can find that works as a tag!

One of my favourite dies is this one of a window. As well as liking the shape, I've always found it intriguing and been drawn to lighted windows: what secrets do they hold? OK, I know, I'm just nosy! The new Lynne Perrella Collection from PaperArtsy features this beautiful, large stamp, which is in the form of a sheet of postage stamps. These looked as if they would fit into my little window panes so I decided that I would use them and another part of the sheet to back my tag so that it looks nice on both sides. They also suggest the window that artists invite us to peep into on a wonderful world of colour and imagination! I stamped the word 'Artist' from one of Sara Nauman's Eclectica plates for PaperArtsy.

Here is the reverse side of my window shaped tag. I added a podium die to the top of the window to add interest to the shape. I have often thought how the postage stamps we take for granted and pop on to our letters are mini masterpieces. Wouldn't it be sad if email, Twitter and Facebook meant that we no longer needed to use them? The artists who create our postage stamps bring miniature window panes of art to us in our everyday lives. That, of course, got me thinking about everything that word means to me. I believe it's the greatest compliment you can pay a creative person to call them an artist. Since I began blogging in April I have met artists second to none who have filled my life with colour and great pleasure! And, of course, Lynne Perrella is one of my favourite artists too! 

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I don't often use large areas of black, but this time I created a shabby look for my window by painting it first with PaperArtsy Beach Hut, which is a very vivid blue then a coat of Crackle Glaze and then a thick application of Little Black Dress. In this close-up you can see I played with some Frantage too - Shabby Blue and some Gold UTEE. I had some black lace and black mesh in my stash and some gold trim that is so fine it reminds me of spiders' webs. The 'A' is from Tim Holtz's Worn Alphabet. Some dyed seam-binding, coloured with Peacock Feathers and Broken China Distress inks and a Prima Mechanical finish off the top.

For behind my window panes, I used some Smoothy Card with Fresco Opaques blended: Mermaid, Lake Wanaka and Stone. I then stenciled over this with South Pacific translucent to hint at sunlight and shadow sending leafy patterns over the panes...

 and added a little script in places. I stamped my Lynne Perrella sheet of postage stamps in Versafine Vintage Sepia for a change. I chose the images I liked the best and coordinated the three ladies by giving them a vivid splash of London Bus Fresco for their lips. I painted some book text and used a lace punch by Xcut on it to edge my tag. The Prima wooden bird stamped and painted and then glossed with clear UTEE symbolises how the artists around us help us to 'Take Flight' and soar on the wings of imagination.

 Thank you so much for dropping by today. Please do join in with this fortnight's challenge and link up here. I'd love to see what new tag shapes you can come up with!