Happiness Comes in Waves - by Claudia

Servus, hi and thanks so much for stopping by today!
Spring is in full swing over here in Donaustadt, Vienna, which means that some of the lawns and fields of the market gardens nearby are covered by thousands of poppies. There will be more poppies throughout the next months in the roadside ditches and little corners here and there, but now there's this ocean of red and only for a very limited time.

As there's the Old Danube and many little ponds as well, the large dragonflies and seagulls are back too. These together with the bright red from the poppies form a very special atmosphere that I enjoy so much when walking my dog these days. I wanted to treasure this special mood by capturing it in a tag.

And with the beautiful "Wild Poppies" Wood Shape this was quite easy to do. ;)


Calico Craft Parts used:

- Wild Poppies MDF Wood Shape - Style 55
- MDF Tag Shape - Classic
- Sheet of Mini MDF Wood Birds - Seagulls
- Sheet of Mini Insects - MDF Wood Shapes Style 1
- Word Elements - Summer and Seaside


As usual I started with finding the perfect spots for the Wood Shapes I wanted to use and took a picture (in case I needed it for reference).

Then I dry brushed the poppies, word band, sea gulls, bee and dragon fly with two layers of DecoArt media white Gesso. 

I used DecoArt Americana paints on the whole tag. To create the first background layer for the sky, I mixed Ultra Blue Deep, Sea Breeze and White Wash on my palette and on the tag, scraping the paints on with a palette knife.

After the first layer had dried, I applied pure Ultra Blue Deep and White Wash to add a cloudy look.

The background for the poppies was done the same way - mixing Festive Green, Avocado Dip, Citron Green and Limeade with the palette knife on the palette and while scraping the paints on wet on wet.
While I used only horizontal movements when scraping on the sky, I used only vertical movements for the meadow.

For the poppies I used Alizarin Crimson, True Red, Cadmium Red, Festive Green and Black Plum.

I worked wet on wet to create shades of reds for more dimension. The centres of the poppies were painted using watered down Yellow Light.


The sea gulls, bee and dragon fly were painted using a detail brush and Yellow Light, Charcoal Grey, White Wash, Sea Breeze and Red Iron Oxide.

The painted parts were glued to the tag using matte DecoArt Decou-Page. Later - after everything had dried - I added a bit of doodling with a white gel pen around the edges of the word band and the tag.

But first I added some DecoArt media Liquid Glass to the insects' wings. After that had cured I swiped on some Turquoise DecoArt Metallic Lustre with my fingertip.

A thorough coat of Triple Thick was brushed onto the poppies...

...but I left the stamina untreated so the lovely texture from the Craft Parts would not get lost.

Finally the word band was fixed to the tag using sticky foam pads and string. 

Voilá!

Some close ups as usual: 

I hope I have managed to capture this special time of year or at least the hint of what I love so much about it.  The sight of the fields covered in red, the sea gulls' cries and the big dragon flies buzzing by - that definitely touches me like a  "wave of happiness".

There are other lovely poppy wood shapes in the Calico Craft Parts shop...simply use the search function on the shop page or browse the Flora and Fauna section for the collection of Poppy Wood Shapes.

Hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx