Hold On

At the bottom center of this photo are the words "Bird's Nest" (click to enlarge) and it was pure coincidence. The star, cut from the index pages of a very, very old cookbook was made before I even thought of using a bird (Thrift-shop Ephemera) to carry it and even then, I didn't make the connection until it was pasted down.

The stamped background was made using Tim's Dots & Floral stamp set with red and grey archival ink then tinted with colored pencils after applying a light white wash. A bit of machine stitching, gelly roll dots, Chit-Chat stickers and washi were used to complete it.

I'm linking to this week's Monday blog challenge at Simon where, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, the prompt is Use Some Lucky Stars.

Dreamer

This tag began as a happy accident. I received a new stencil (Tim's Blossom) and it was tossed on my tabletop. Later, I noticed that an unused cut-out of this lady had landed on top. Somehow, they seemed to go together and so I ran with it.

I used paint to stamp tiny text over a tinted background then applied blue, grays and greens through the stencil. The lady was put into place and I stamped then overpainted a few birds (Tim's Birds on a Wire). A few of his Big Chit-Chat stickers seemed right to explain the scene.

I'm linking up to Simon's Make Your Own Background challenge.

Foyles

Foyles Bookstores is a rather famous London landmark that has a colorful history and I've used a photo by Wolf Suschitzky of a man standing in front of it for this tag.

I began with a pile of scrap papers that were cut and pasted to form a background then laser printed a reversed version of the photo and used polymer medium to transfer the image.

Except for the very blackest areas, image transfers are transparent so I made a tracing of the man's face, book and hands to line up with the tag so I could paint the background white in those areas. This way, the parts would stand out better and not be obscured.

I liked the results but wanted a contrast to better emphasize the man so I used paint to simplify the background and found an image of books (actually wallpaper by Muriva) then cut it to fit before doing another image transfer.

The final result includes the addition of some Remnant Rubs and a bit of sanding to distress and bring out the uneven thickness of the original paper background.

The intense contrast of black and white in the original photo is what attracted me to it and the sidewalk shadow is a favorite part of this tag. Of course, the gentlemen is also terrific and I am happy that the glare in his eyeglasses came through.

The book (like a vintage smart phone) makes me wonder what he was reading and why it couldn't wait until he got home?

I'm linking to the Monday blog challenge at SSS where this week's theme is Make Your Own Background.