Dragons' Dream - Butterflies and the letter 'I'

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven. It's time to dream with the Dragons again. Last fortnight  everyone came up with some wonderful interpretations of Music and the letter 'R'. This time we have the lovely and talented Elizabeth and she has chosen 'Butterflies and the letter "I"'. I think that my love of butterflies is something I share with quite a few crafters out there! This ethereal little creature is not only beautiful, but it also symbolizes so much! If you flutter over to The Dragons' Dream TIO, you'll see some of the 'I' words that my gifted team-mates have put together with their butterflies! Flying with the wings of imagination is certainly a popular idea when we look at butterflies; but I will always associate butterflies with Infinity!

At the end of Angela Carter's last novel before she died in 1992, the ageing Chance sisters receive a gift from their long-lost explorer uncle: a myriad Rain-forest butterflies. The narrator, Dora exclaims, 'What a joy it is to dance and sing!' The cycle of life goes on as the sisters near the end of their lives, and we feel that Nature's dance of creation and recreation will extend into infinity! I really wanted to convey something of this idea on my tag this time.

I recycled part of a box, cutting it into a tag using my Tim Holtz Bigz die. I then tore parts to reveal the corrugations below. I stuck my corrugated card tag onto some plain card to give it extra strength then Gessoed it. I also stuck some book text - a Shakespeare sonnet onto the card. Eventually the butterflies took over, but I think you can just see a little bit of the text here in the top right hand corner. I wanted plenty of blue on my tag, as this colour suggests infinity to me. I used Mermaid Fresco, Chartreuse and some Inky Pool blended together. For my poem at the centre of the tag, I took a torn piece of card and swiped it through Tim Holtz Distress Inks: Broken China, Peacock Feathers and Evergreen Bough, spritzing and flicking to get a watery effect. I used Classic Treasure Gold to accentuate the corrugations on my tag and to accent the curled edges of my focal text. This is a lovely quotation from William Blake and part of Lin Browns' Eclectica Flower Sentiments. I stamped onto the blue background with Potting Soil Archival ink by Wendy Vecchi.

Here is my letter 'I' from the Tim Holtz Tattered Alphabet that I love to use for these tags! It is stamped in Potting Soil then embossed onto stacked pieces of scrap card edged with gold UTEE and Shabby Blue Frantage. I frantaged the corrugated card in places too! My theory is that you can't have too much Frantage!

I wanted my butterflies to look as if they were ready to fly away into an infinite blue sky and to create as many different effects on them as I could. The large one is a die-cut painted with Brown Shed Fresco and then covered with a combination of clear UTEE, copper Frantage and gold UTEE. Some of the butterflies are punched from PaperArtsy Chatsworth paper; some are painted and then stamped with PaperArtsy Minis 26 and 30; some are from stencilled card and some are created from recycled Baby Wipes, which I use as mop-ups! I also stamped a little script on my background and made it look worn by not using a block.

 It was completely serendipitous that the words 'hour' and 'age' are just visible at the top right of the tag: do you ever find that this happens? I filled a tiny bottle with what I hope look like grains of sand! They are actually grains of yellow embossing powder; but they symbolize the infinite number of grains of sand on the shore. I attached the bottle with some frantaged curly wire and layered more butterflies on it! 

A little punched out lace book text completes the tag. I do hope you will feel inspired to join the Dragons and dream with them this fortnight. Take flight on butterflies' wings and dream of the perfect word beginning with 'I'. Remember to include at least one stamp on your tag, but apart from that the possibilities are infinite!