Reflections in the moonlight

Hi there!  Welcome to my blog.  Thank you for visiting, and special welcome to my latest followers - I really appreciate your interest. 

Today I'm showing my entry for the Dragon's Dream TIO challenge.  The theme this time is  Night Riverbank, so the recipe  boats, driftwood and insects.

 

I'll be completely honest - this is my third attempt at this tag.  The first one I dropped the inkpad on when I was inking up the butterflies, the second one I put my inky fingers into the middle of the moon and in both cases there was no disguising it so into the bin they went.  Still, three tries for a Welsh(wo)man and fortunately attempt no. 3 went to plan.

 

I began with a white tag from Inkylicious.  (The card is absolutely brilliant for stamping and colouring.)  I stamped the ship onto the tag (about halfway up) in Memento ink, then I stamped it again onto some acetate without re-inking the stamp.  I positioned the acetate (inky side down)  so that the images lined up, then rubbed over it to transfer the image and voila - instant reflection.  I also stamped the ship onto some Post-Its to make a mask, and cut out a couple of circles to mask off the moon and its reflection.  I put a Post-It across the "waterline" to mask off the sky, as I wanted to work on the "water" first of all.

 

I inked up my brayer with Denim Adirondack and when I had a good even coverage, scrunched up a piece of copy paper and brayered over it (if you've ever watched Barbara Grey in action you'll know what I mean.)  Then I brayered over the bottom of the tag once, removed the circle mask, and went over it again. 

 

I uncovered the "waterline" so that only the ship and the moon were masked and brushed (with Colourduster brushed) Denim, Stonewash and Wild Plum over the top half of the tag.  I removed the masks and using Black Soot ink on Cut & Dry nibs, shaded the sails of the ship and brushed on some water to blend the ink out. 

 

Almost done now!  I stamped the "Split Tree" stamp (from Clarity) sideways across the bottom of the tag to create "driftwood".  Just the insects to add.  In the haunted wing of my stash I found one of the first stamps I ever bought - a group of butterflies (from PSX, dated 1999).  Some of them were too big to work for the tag - so I covered those with masking tape while I got Black Soot DI on the stamp. Then I  took the tape away and stamped the butterflies.  A bit of water to blend the ink, some vintage ribbon coloured with Distress Stains (Weathered Wood and Broken China) and it's (finally!) finished.

 

Oh, and while I was trying to photograph the tag, Craft Supervisor Mysti decided that she needed to be photographed - so here she is in all her glory.