Isola Bella, a Sicilian jewel

Hello....I am back from my Sicilian adventures. What a brilliant holiday we had and I had such fun posting whilst I was away. Thanks for all your kind comments on my last post, I had such fun making my Moment whilst crafting in the shadow of Mount Etna. It really did stretch me to make something with such limited crafting supplies. I have lots of photos to sort through and I have lots of crafting inspiration from Sicily so I will probably share them in stages over the coming weeks rather than just use them all in the next couple of posts.

For today I thought I would just share some photos of the beautiful Isola Bella, this tiny island sits like a jewel in the glimmering sea at Taormina mare. We took the cable car down to the mare area and to this delightful spot and spent a couple of hours just pottering around and admiring the views.
You walk onto the island via this narrow strip of sand. Well we had to paddle across as the tide was slightly higher!

Isola Bella has an old folly on it which has been turned into a tiny museum. The island was in private hands until 1990 but has now been turned into a nature reserve and is managed by the world wide fund for nature.
It was a steaming hot day and we found some shade too.
These were some of the gorgeous view from Isola Bella

 I made a little sketch of some of the plant life which I will share soon but for my card challenges today I decided to make a tag to remember our wonderful day. This is the first thing I have made since I got home so I wanted to get inky.....I have had withdrawal symptoms whilst I have been away! Amongst the countless loads of washing I have done I nipped in and out of my studio to create it. I made this for my husband to remind him of our trip to the Isola Bella. I wanted to try to recreate the blue/green colour of the sea on that glorious day,

I got out my waves texture fade and embossed a tag

 I chose lots of sea coloured distress inks and started blending away

and then added some seaweed via a stencil

 I die cut some sea creatures and shells using Kraft card and put my tag together.

Here it is; the seahorses are Cheery Lynn. The words are my own printed on Kraft card on the computer. The happy word die is Britannia.

 I added some Marine blue frantage for some sparkle, just like the shimmer of the sea.

 and you can see I used my favourite Designs by Ryn bubble stamp.

I would like to enter my tag into the following challenges;

Cheery Lynn Keep it Krafty, use Kraft card
Anything but cute make it masculine
Crafty cardmakers and more for a man or boy
The artistic stamper summer is on its way
Noor! Here comes summer
Craft my life anything goes but no cards
Stamp and create summer fun
Mixed media world masculine/father's day
Sparkles vintage or shabby chic..my tag is vintage
We love to create anything goes/mixed media
That craft place anything goes
A Vintage Journey celebrations my celebration is of a happy holiday! My Hb is going to keep this as a book mark to remember sitting on the beautiful Isola Bella

It's always good to be home especially when a relaxing holiday has so recharged your batteries. It makes you count your blessings and appreciate the good things in life. Thanks so much for your blogging friendship and sharing my creativity here at Jane's Journal.

It's back to work for me tomorrow and the weather is looking good. I have lots to look forward to over the coming weeks.  I hope you are also looking forward to a good summer.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x