Like a Phoenix...

Hello all and a huge welcome to my new followers. I am so glad to have all my followers with me for the journey which has taken another step with this project. All will become clear, but I will warn you now that this is a long post (one of the challenges requires step by steps for resist techniques). So here's the completed tag, and you can choose whether you want to find out more.

This is being entered into a number of challenges;

Our Creative Corner - Resisting Challenge (resist with description and wings)

Dragons Dream Tag It On - Art For Art's Sake (handmade background/character with a twist)

Anything But A Card - Anything Goes (a brand new challenge with amazing entries/DT)

Now for the 'how to' and the first resist technique for the background.

Emboss black card and carefully apply Glue n Seal to the raised parts (I used a piece of Cut n Dry).

When dry, apply pigment ink over the whole tag, then wipe over with a cloth/tissue paper to remove the ink on the raised areas.

Finally edge the tag with pigment ink (I found ones with a shine to them worked best).

Now for the second resist technique - it's shorter!

Use white acrylic paint as a medium to stamp onto seam binding and allow to dry.

Apply Distress Ink, spray with water and then dab gently with a tissue to remove ink from stamped areas.

OK, resist descriptions over (hopefully clearly enough, but if you have any questions just leave me a comment and I will always get back to you). Now to the phoenix/journey element...

The Dragons Dream team asked for a quirky character. This is my effort (I know, not very quirky but my stamp collection seems to include almost no human forms! Need to rectify that at some stage).

Phoenix lady is made from three different stamps - the head/arms/top from Indigo Blu, the dress, cogs and hat from one Kanban set and the wings from another. I am particularly pleased with the wings (just realised, one more technique shot, but it's a cracker!)

Whilst working away yesterday morning Barbara Gray (a crafting goddess) was on the box describing how she combines different colours of  bondable angel fibres to create a graduated effect - this is a technique she was shown by another superstar, Maria Simms. Well I took it one stage further; the tropical peach colour wasn't really working for me so, once stamped with Black Archival ink I coloured it from the back with drops of Alcohol Ink to get the effect required. Go carefully with this as it spreads quickly and needs some time to dry, but as a consequence you can use your finger to move the colour where needed.

Final picture (promise!!) This is the journey bit. When I began to make cards a lot of them had stamped (digi or otherwise) images on which were coloured with Promarkers and sometimes decoupaged. I've missed doing that recently having moved into mixed media in a big way, but felt simple decoupage just didn't look good enough for this project. Hence the stamped/coloured skirt has been cut to allow for small shredded pieces of net to be inserted, adding far more texture and interest. Hurrah, a way to add dimension to flat images that I can feel proud of again :)) Bit of a phoenix from the ashes moment!

Congratulations to everyone who's made it to the end. Hope you've picked up some ideas along the way. Thanks also to all those who sent their congrats for my win with Tim's August tag. That was a confidence boost or what! and I'm still doing a happy dance about it :D Time to disappear and wish you all a good week ahead. Hugs, Buttons x