Lavinia Stamps Challenge #2- Bright & Beautiful

Firstly, a huge Thank You to Eileen Godwin, for inviting me to be a Guest DT member for this challenge, the second from the new Lavinia Stamps Challenge Blog.
I gave the 'Bright & Beautiful' theme quite a bit of thought- I had the idea for sunrise, but didn't know what I could do with it. Finally, inspiration arrived:

I framed my piece, as this will become one of our Granddaughter Merlins birthday presents.
I did something similar for her last year, in this post,also using Lavinia Stamps. 

 The picture itself is on a half A4 piece of matt card, from Lavinia Stamps.
The stamps I used are:
Wet Wings
Cherry Blossom branch,
Spiral of Spells
Three Fairies and
Slender Mushrooms tiny.
 Inkpads are Adirondacks and Versafine.

  I began by sponging Lemonade & Sunshine Yellow randomly over the whole sheet,then tore some copy paper to mask off the upper portion of the card, and sponged Citrus & Meadow Adirondack inks over the lower half. Next came the sunrise and rays, and this took me three attempts to get it looking ok.

These were the first two attempts- I didn't like how harsh the edges looked, and you can see I also changed the orientation for the final version.I'd cut out a circle from more copy paper to make a mask, and also used the edges of the copy paper for the suns rays.
What I finally did was to still use the punched out circle, but I tore around the edge to make it less harsh, and I also tore the edges I was using for the suns rays. 


 To get the rays, I just sponged off the torn edge which made them a little softer,- still using the Sunshine Yellow.













The first stamp onto the background, with Onyx Black Versafine, is Wet Wings,and I made a lot of use of my Stamp Positioner to get everything exactly where I wanted it.

  Next I wanted to 'frame' the image with the Cherry Blossom branch, which I positioned on both sides.








I had started adding the Tiny Mushrooms, when I thought the area below the trees didn't look right, so I added some more of the Cherry Blossom branch on the left to give it some balance.

 I finished adding Mushrooms, and started with the Three Fairies.








I repeated one of the fairies, and the fairy who looks like she could be sitting somewhere, I placed onto the washing line. And that was the stamping completed.

To give the drying fairy wings some sparkle, I added Stickles in Crystal, and also to the wings of the fairies themselves.














Along with the Sunrise, my thought for the Bright & Beautiful had been dewdrops, and for these I used some very small acrylic flatback gems, placed here and there. I added some even smaller dots of dew with the Crystal Stickles.
I now used a couple of pink Promarkers to add colour to the Cherry Blossom.


Looking at the image, I felt it needed something in the central area- it looked a bit too empty. At first, I was going to use the word stamp 'Believe', which I did in Crystal glitter on transparency film.

 
 However, after it had dried, it was just a little too big to fit the space , so I put it to one side. I ended up using it for the card I entered in the February challenge, in this post.
 So I got creative with the Spiral Of Spells stamp. I chose to use the words on it that read 'Sparkling Magical Lights', which I thought summed up the theme, and the dewdrops. Because of the spiral shape, the words are on a curve, which fit nicely with the  rising sun.

I masked off the surrounding words with low tack tape, inked up the words I wanted, then peeled off the tape.











                                        The words fitted perfectly inside the sunrise.

When it had dried, I decided to frame it as a picture for Merlins wall, rather than use it on a card.Now, you have to wonder..... are the fairies placing the dewdrops around, or are they collecting them, perhaps for some magical potion for their Queen? I will leave it to your imagination......

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone else take on the theme, and I hope you've enjoyed how I made mine (warts 'n' all).