Inky, grungy, sunshine

I've been musing about the latest Compendium of Curiosities Challenge over at StudioL3 during the week (p39 of The Book) but not had time to do any playing, and to be honest I was a bit nervous as I haven't used grungepaper before and it could be a pricey mistake if I messed it up! Now I'm wondering how I managed without it !

Inspiration for this tag came from two sources really - the Chestnut Challenge at Gingersnaps Creations currently is Famous Painters or Paintings. I've chosen a painting from the Paris sunflower series by Van Gogh because , well , I like it!  My Sunflower is one of my oldest stamps - a PSX from 1999, one of the first I bought and the background of the Tag is stamped with 'Sequin Waste' from The artistic Stamper which arrived this morning so is my newest stamp. On this baiss I'm entering into the Artistic Stamper 'something old something new' challenge with this tag too.   I stamped the sunflower in brown Stazon and added some Cinnamon stickles to the centre which you can't see on the photo. The  which I've then spritzed with water. Ooh..and I must mention the charm - this was my gift from Gloria at the 'All things Tim' Yahoo group that I won a few weeks ago and arrived this morning (of course she didn't just send me one - that would be silly, but a whole package of Type Charms, thanks so much). Because of the colours I've used my tag also fits with the Primary colours challenge at Allsorts.

The other inspiration for this tag came while browsing 'Cathy Walters' Etsy shop. This was in aid of the Etsyinspired challenge, that I discovered today, to pick an item of art from the weeks etsy shop to inspire your own piece. Cathy Walters makes little pieces of wearable art in pendant form and I was quite taken with this one (given my love of sunflowers not surprising!).

While I had the sunshine coloured Distress inks out - Mustard yellow, Dried marigold, Wild Honey and Fired Brick, I decided to keep going with the grunge and made another piece. I haven't made it into anything yet, but will probably use it for a card. I was trying to go for a sunshine through the tress kid of feel - it looks quite dark on the pic but the colours are lighter and more yellowy orange in real life.  I've embossed the grunge paper with Tim Holtz sizzix 'rays' folder and added highlights with some gold metallic rub on. The film strip is an 'Artistic stamper' stamp (which also arrived this morning and had to be used immediately!), I've stamped it onto acetate in black and again onto black card in white in, cut out pics of trees from a crafty individuals pad and layered them together. The tree is stamped on acetate and torn down the right side.  I'm going to add this to the Ginger Snaps Creations random redhead Challenge 'Sunshine' - even though it's not bright sunshine (just like our real weather!).