Dreaming with the Dragons, Rust and the letter 'O'!

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven! I probably say this every fortnight, so I apologize in advance and - off I go again - 'I can't believe it's once again time to dream with the Dragons!' We had some beautiful entries for the recipe chosen by Gabrielle of 'Cogs and the letter P' and the Dreamboat 3 will be announced soon. This time I'm very excited because it's my turn to choose the letter and colour for your tags! If you pop over to the Dragons' Dream TIO here, you'll see the great designs my 'teamies' and lovely guest designer, Rein have come up with. I decided to 'christen' my new Darcy and Sara Nauman stamps that I bought at Stamperama and some of the new PaperArtsy colours by Lin Brown and Jofy as well as adding some rust: this is what I came up with.

Oh, yes, and I managed to get some Lynne Perrella in there too! As always I wove a story around my tag. The lady in the rusted wooden frame looks like a beautiful and haughty Parisienne, I think! A young man from the country has fallen for her, but does he dare to hope she will even cast a glance in his direction - never mind utter the word 'Oui'? The wooden dragon fly and little Darcy tissue flower with pearl accents symbolize the country boy's hopes and aspirations! Have you ever read Proust's 'Remembrance of things Past'? I kept thinking of this beautiful collection of writings as I crafted this tag and the way Proust captures so vividly the sense of place and the difference between town and country.

I bought a little brayer when I was at Stamperama, Stevenage recently and used it to create the background on this tag with the new PaperArtsy colours, Slate, Plum, Chalk and Turquoise, stamping the Sara Nauman text on in Chalk, as I was so impressed when I saw Leandra and Courtney of PaperArtsy demonstrate this simple technique at Stevenage. I love the effect of these little Darcy birds, as they create a dreamy and floating impression. I used some Inktense pencils to add highlights and gold and transparent UTEE in places. The tiles are card painted with Nougat, stamped with coffee Archival Sara Nauman script and then stamped over in black and coated with transparent and flecks of gold UTEE.

 I also did some dimensional highlights with a gold 3D pen.

The rusty key to the box of old love letters; a fragment from a letter; the curled and rusted edges of a tiny tissue flower and the rusted corner of an old chest - did she ever say, 'Oui'? I will leave that to you to decide, Dear Reader! While you're pondering, why not link up your tag to the Dragons Dream Tio? Remember to use at least one real stamp on a tag and have something rusty and the letter 'O' on there somewhere. I can't wait to see what you come up with.