Dragons' Dream - A flower and the letter 'B'.

Hello Followers and Friends! I do hope that you had a wonderful Easter break and that if you don't celebrate Easter, you have been happy and enjoying some glorious Spring weather. I so appreciate the kindness of my followers in stopping by to take a look at my 'Magpie Makes' and I hope that you will find something of interest in the Magpie's Nest. Today it's time to dream with the Dragons again, and this week the amazing Gabrielle has set the recipe! She had so many ideas whirring around in her imagination, in the end she asked her son, Tom to decide and he came up with 'The letter 'b' and a flower'. Of course I was up and away with that recipe, so eager to play around with creating flowers that it wasn't until it was too late that I realized Tom's instruction had been 'A flower' - not a whole bunch of them! I do hope he and Gabrielle will forgive me for getting 'carried away' and featuring not one, but four flowers in all! Sadly Magpies are not renowned for arithmetic! If you want to see some great takes on this recipe by people who can read and count (!) then please click here. We love to see your beautiful tags so do link up with the Dragons' Dream too!

'B' is for blue - my favourite colour so I began by covering a Jumbo tag with some Ice Blue, Fresco Finish paint. I then went over with some Antarctic and some Mermaid, using my new Prima sanding tool that I bought at Ally Pally to rub off some of the top coat to reveal the different shades beneath. Next it was time to play with the gorgeous doily stencil by Rebekah Meier for the Crafters Workshop that I also bought from AP. I used Leandra at PaperArtsy's 'bumping' technique for this, sponging through the stencil first in Chocolate Pudding, then shifting it a little and sponging over with Mermaid.

After adding some text from a PaperArtsy mini in Wendy Vecchi Potting Soil archival, I gave it a good sand with my Prima tool for an aged look and edged it with Inky Pool and then French Roast. The Prima too also has an edge for distressing the sides of the tag.

As you can see, I played with all sorts of ideas for creating different layered flowers. I had to put aside some of my fantasy flowers for another project in the end. I also found a Tim Holtz medallion in my stash with the word, 'Breathe' engraved into it. My tag was beginning to have a message: flowers, birds and blue all symbolize part of what it is to breathe and to feel alive for me! Blue skies, the scent of flowers and the sound of birdsong combine to make my Magpieheaven!

 Eventually, after much shifting around of elements, I came up with this composition. The blue eye at the centre of the flower on the right was painted with some Glossy Accents over Beach Hut Fresco to give the effect of a bright blue eye! The eye is part of an 'Inkylicious' stamp of a face. Over on the left is the beautiful Lynne Perrella lady stamped with Wendy Vecchi, Potting Soil onto Shrink Plastic, painted with Antarctic Fresco. I just had to include her, as she seemed so perfectly to complement the circles on the doily stencil.

I used a Crop-o-dile to punch a hole through the plastic, threading a little blue waxed thread through to make her into a medallion too. The Tim Holtz disc was painted with Antarctic and touched with some Sapphire Treasure Gold.

This is my favourite in the flower garden: a brown gauze flower sent by my crafting friend, Kerry Ann Hickton; some Tim Holtz die-cut petals; a rusted Prima flower courtesy of Lucy another of my dear crafting friends and a little blue resin bird, covered in Sapphire and Indigo Treasure Gold. Thank you so much for dreaming with me today in my blue tag garden. I wish you all blue skies, blue flowers and birdsong in your own gardens this Springtime!