Sky Light

    It's all about 'Hot Air' today, outside and on this tag. I hope you're enjoying our burst of summer here in the UK. Early morning gardening has given way to heat of the day crafting in this house.
    My tag was inspired by some unusual and amusing stamps from Chocolate Baroque and the need to join in with Make My Monday's challenge for balloons.
    I began by stamping my balloons in Archival Ink Coffee and clear embossing them. I then stamped a mask on sticky notes and also stamped another copy on thin card to cut out later.
    With the masks in place I coloured my tag with Distress Inks Broken China and Faded Jeans. I spritzed water on the tag and dabbed off to get speckles and then water stamped the 'skylight' again. Once dry I stamped in Faded Jeans some oriental writing, a globe, a swirl and a phrase, then I used Distress Ink Chipped Sapphire to darken the edges. After darkening the edges I ruffed them up with my scissors and dabbed them with Distress Stain Brushed Pewter and stamped a swirl in the bottom corner with the same stain.

    Once all the inking was done I set about removing the masks and colouring the balloons. Originally I coloured the top balloon green but it looked like a flying gooseberry so I had to change it! To get the metal effect I have covered the cut out card shapes with Aluminium tape from a local discount shop and because I had embossed the image before covering it the detail showed as tiny ridges, this made drawing over them with a Promarker really easy. They are mounted using foam pads of two different thicknesses to give shape.
    I have coloured most of the top balloon's flying gear with a silver metallic marker from Staedler, great shine with these markers, but thought the Chinese style lantern should be red.
    To finish I have used seam binding stained with Distress Stain Stormy Sky and Brushed Pewter.

I would like to enter my balloons in the following challenge:

Make My Monday - Balloons