A Dream of Turquoise and Bling!

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven! I can't believe that it's taken me this long to create my first blog post of 2015! We just seem to have been so busy in the Magpies' Nest! Over at The Dragons' Dream we have a new challenge for 2015! We would like you to make a tag - of course - this time it's a new colour each fortnight and a little extra! The lovely Elizabeth gets the ball rolling with her choice of Turquoise and Bling! Do take a look at what the talented team have come up with here! Just as we did last year, we would like to see at least one real stamp on your tag and we simply ask that it should be a tag of some kind and that you interpret our fortnightly 'recipe' in some way and then link up your creativity.

I was really eager to start creating after Christmas and to 'break into' some of the 'goodies' I had been given by my family and friends! Eventually I was able to grab some time and use materials that were completely new to me! This tag is a birthday card for an old school friend  who has her birthday on Epiphany, January 6th and it's also an experiment with brand new media, so I would like to enter it for The Country View Challenge 'Use Something New to You' here, where this month the team would like us to use something we have never created with before!

I've been dying to explore new ways of creating colour and texture, so for Christmas, I asked for some Prima Basics gels and some Luminarte Primary Elements. I began by painting a jumbo tag in a blend of different PaperArtsy Fresco Finish blues as a foundation: Antarctic, Lake Wanaka and Turquoise. I then stamped Lynne Perrella feathers in Wendy Vecchi Cobalt Blue, Forget-me-not and then Versamark with white Wow embossing powder. Now it was time to try something new. I took a little Primary Element in Guatemalan Green and a little in Dutch Iris and blended them in some Prima Transparent 3D gel until I had gleaming dimensional paste, which I pushed through a Prima flourish stencil. I painted the little resin rose and then added Treasure Gold in Sapphire and a sprinkling of Charcoal Art Sugar, which is also 'new to me'.

I then added painted tissue leaves stamped from a Darcy plate for PaperArtsy, using the same archival inks. To create even more 'bling', I sprinkled some of the Charcoal Art Sugar over thin layers of gel medium. It is difficult to convey in a photo but the tag does glitter and gleam in the light! I loved using the gel and creating my own colours with the Primary Elements and I will definitely be playing a lot more with these in the coming months.

The image at the centre of the tag is from the Lynne Perrella Collection 028. I stamped it onto tissue painted with Fresco Finish Nougat with some Inktense highlights on the face and the background. Tiny Pearlen Pen pearls provide just a little more 'bling' in the form of  a frame for this lady who always seems to be peeping from behind exotic, embroidered curtains. I hope that the colours and this lady who resembles a Moroccan princess to me will  transport my old friend from the chilly Midlands to blue skies and exotic destinations. Thank you so much for dropping by for this first post of the New Year - may 2015 be filled with creative joy!