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.
