The sunshine beckons me...

It is an amazingly beautiful day here - the sun is scorching hot (most unusual for April!) and utterly inspiring! I wanted to make something for this week's Grungy Monday challenge at Studio L3 and  oddly I was drawn to Tim's umbrella man stamp (why I looked at the umbrella on a day like today...! Perhaps because I only bought it yesterday from the lovely Lin at LB Crafts!). 

As the challenge was to use texture fades I cut out a tag with my wonderfully fabulous Vagabond (am still utterly in love with this!) from the Crowded Attic paper stack; bravely cut a slit in the top of my collage texture fade (I say bravely, Tim said in one of his videos that it was ok to do this but I am not usually able to bring myself to deface anything I own!); inked my man up in Black Soot Distress Ink on the side that I wanted to be the top and ran it through my Vagabond (did I mention how much I love it?!). I went bonkers and swiped faded Jeans and Peeled Paint Distress Inks over the raised areas and then dabbed Lettuce, Cloudy Blue and Gold Paint Dabbers and sprayed it with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls. In case the photo doesn't do the colours justice it looks much like a British five pound note! 

The adage ticket and mini rosette were treated exactly the same way and the Philosophy tag was inked with Aqua Alcohol Ink and highlighted with Gold Paint Dabber. I used a jump ring and memo pin to attach it to the rosette and then used my lovely Dymo to write 'the'! I cut blue, green and gold ribbon in half and attached it at the top. As I was making this I couldn't quite shake the idea that the umbrella man was on his way to work hence the idea of him needing to be reminded to 'Live the journey' instead of just going through the motions of the journey. All this is getting a little deep for such a wonderfully warm day! Time for an ice cream I think! I hope the sun is shining where you are!


Gabrielle x
ps - the title is from the lyrics of Lazy Days by Robbie Williams - and I can't quite get them out of my head!