I dream of a November to Remember

I'm really, really late in posting my tag this month. I have a great excuse though - for the past couple of weeks I've been studying like mad for a job interview that took place on the 12th. Worth all the trouble though - I got the job! From a date still to be decided (but soon) I will no longer be a Health, Safety and Wellbing Assistant (admin) with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Instead I will be a Health and Wellbeing Technician (Occupational Health) with the same employer. So the title of my job doesn't get any shorter, and the team I'll be working in will be the same, but I'll just have a different role in it. And a bigger salary. :-) Lots of driving around Central Scotland, lots of new stuff to learn, lots of firefighters to do medical tests on, and after 39 years chained behind an office desk that's just a tad scary. Wish me luck.

Anyhoo, my tag. 

I don't have the blueprint pumpkin stamp, and in any case had already decided that whatever this month's tag was like, I just HAD to use some of the items that Tim sent me last month (God bless that man).

When I saw the Autumn theme, I immediately thought of using the leaf dies I was given and making a tag with falling leaves and a heart (I do love the colours of Autumn) but then Tim went and did a post about leaves, so that was that.

In the event, I used the compass blueprint stamp I won in the monthly prize, just the outside part like Tim did with the pumpkin.    Here's the tag...

To start with, I swooshed the tag with Spun Sugar distress stain, and dried it with my heat gun. I inked the Rays stamp with some watermark ink and stamped that near the bottom of the tag. Then I swiped horizontal lines of Chipped Sapphire, Dusty concord, stormy sky, and dried marigold inks from ink pads on my craft sheet, spritzed that with water and then pressed the tag into it, being careful to not twist it. That way I created a look of the sky at sunrise, going from dark to light from top to bottom.  The watermark stamp gives an impression of crepuscular rays. Fab. I added a touch more chipped sapphire to the edges and the very top of the tag.

I didn't have the gold foil, but I did have some gold leaf left over from a leafing job I did on a firefighter helmet. It's a long story..

So, I put a wee bit of that at the bottom of the tag. Horrible messy stuff to work with, I'll be picking bits of gold off my workspace for days. Then I stamped the outside part of the compass stamp on the top part of the tag.

I cut some clouds out of watercolour paper using the movers and shakers die, then coloured them using the watercolour technique like Tim used on the pumpkin.  I then used tim's technique to embossthem so they looked a little puffy (hard to see this in the photo) and used a Krylon gold leafing pen along the bases of each cloud and layered them near the bottom of the tag.

I think this airplane stamp is my all time favourite.  I stamped this In black, added a few touches of stormy sky and dusty concord then embossed it with clear embossing powder. Just love this stamp.

The words - One Day I'll Fly Away - is just my dream that next year I will get to fly off for a holiday of a lifetime to the USA. I'm trying to get my hubby to agree to a tour of the West Coast for my 60th in November next year. He's ignored all efforts so far. Tsk.

Lastly, I used some of the Correspondence tape as a tie for the tag and added a globe charm on a loop pin.  I highlighted the globe with krylon pen and a touch of stormy sky. All done.

Oops, reflections...

Oh, and another thing. I bought this lot recently from someone in a Facebook craft sell/swap group. Can't wait to make a mini album with them (or several). They have a date of 2006, so before I caught the crafting bug.  The ruler binding is made of chipboard, but an obvious forerunner of the ruler binding we can get now.  Just thought that was interesting.