Dreaming with the Dragons - Gold and the letter Q

Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. I know we Dragons always say this, but I can't believe it's time for the Dragons Dream TIO again! And it's my turn to choose the recipe too, which I'm really excited about! I do hope you will be able to pop over to the Dragons Dream and see what my 'teamies' have created and that you will feel able to join in too. Remember all you need on your tag is to include the letter 'Q' some gorgeous gold of some kind and at least one stamped image. I chose a jumbo tag - I need some more of these now - and I came up with this Renaissance themed fantasy. I expect you've guessed that my 'Q' stands for Quill and that my focal stamped image appears to be on a unravelling scroll!

I wanted to have lots of fun with texture on this one and try to create something sumptuous, so here are some steps along the way.

I painted my jumbo tag with Honeydew, a Fresco Opaque.

After spreading a thin layer of Grunge Paste over my tag, I pressed down some gauze from my stash into it.

When this was nice and dry, I went over it with some Brown Shed Fresco, which is a translucent.

 This is when I really got too involved to take any more photos! I stenciled through a Prima flourish stencil with Wendy Vecchi gold embossing paste and I applied lots of Frantage and Gold UTEE! I made the quill from a Lynne Perrella stamp of a nib, which I tipped in gold UTEE  and the feather is book text, gessoed, spattered with gold UTEE and sculpted onto wire. The hand gripping it is a PaperArtsy mini.

Here you can see the stenciling and a rose created from two different PaperArtsy flower dies. I stamped the Lynne Perrella lady on to card painted first with Stone Fresco, heat set her, and painted the detail with washes of Fresco. There is a bit of a shine on the photo, as I applied a couple of coats of clear UTEE to the image. The little resin bird has been painted and then Treasure Gold in Rose Quartz was applied. I also used Rose Quartz on the under-side of the rose petals.

For my letter, I used the 'triple embossing' technique. I applied Versamark to the tag and then layers of UTEE and Copper Frantage. I heated from under the tag with my heat tool, after each layer was applied until there was a moulten puddle! Then I covered my 'Q' with Archival Ink and pressed it into the melted UTEE. On the top left are some bronzed fragments, which I pressed into Claudine Helmuth's Multi-Medium. My tag reminds me of the Wedding Chests given to newly weds as gifts in Renaissance Italy as they began their new life together. Some of the beautiful paintings in the National Gallery are actually panels from these richly decorated chests, which often showed mythological or allegorical scenes featuring Venus and Cupid - of course! Perhaps my lady, seated at her arched window has sent out this little golden bird with a message of love and loyalty to her fiance? Have a lovely, creative Wednesday and don't forget to try and join in with the Dragons Dream TIO this fortnight.