Four Seasons but remember the now!

Saturday saw the start of Linda Ledbetter's  Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities 3 challenge, based on Tim's latest book and sponsored on alternate weeks by Inspiration Emporium and The Funkie Junkie Boutique, Tim and Mario themselves have  added to the prizes too. To find out more, just click on the link! 

Now if that's not enough, Linda has put together the most amazing design team, her Curiosity Crew; I was totally delighted to find so many of my blogging buddies among them, and boy, what inspiration they have provided!! The first challenge is all about Paint Marbling. Details of this technique can be found on page 43 of the book.

I love this technique and funnily enough had guessed and hoped this might be the first one, and when I saw it I immediately thought I would do something related to the seasons to have a chance to play with the technique several times in different colour ways. So I started with 4 size 8 tags, moving from cool colours for winter and spring, through to warmer ones for summer and autumn.

Below you can see the 4 tags after marbling, inking, doing some Sprits and Flick and in the case of 1 and 2 I added some stenciling too straight away.

For tag 1 I used: Picket Fence, Antique Linen and Tumbled Glass, and then inked with Frayed Burlap, and Walnut Stain. For tag 2 I used: Antique Linen, Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint and inked with Crushed Olive and Frayed Burlap. Tag 3: paints: Antique Linen, Scattered Straw, Wild Honey and Crushed Olive. Funnily enough the green of the Crushed Olive totally disappeared when I dried it, so I brought some of it back in when inking and also added more Wild Honey. Finally tag 4: Paints: Wild Honey, Ripe Permission, Fired Brick and Festive Berries. I inked with Aged Mahogany, Chipped Sapphire and a tiny bit of Dusty Concord and Walnut Stain.

After the backgrounds were done I added stamps, more stenciling, some embossing with texture fades etc.

Here is a close up of tag 1, kept it in a wintery mood.After adhering the stamped and die cut trees I added a bit more colour and texture with shadows. They were stamped in Iced Spruce. The dry embossed snowflakes on the right were from a little folder that came as a freebee with a magazine some years back. I am keeping my fingers crossed Tim will bring out a Snowflake layering stencil with the next release....

This tag sees a mix of stamps from the Tim Holtz Nature Walk set and the Artistic Outpost Birds of a Feather set. The little feathers at the bottom are Spellbinder dies, the greenery is from the TH Spring Greenery strip die and the little flowers I had in my stash. They are rather plasticky , but when I blasted them with my heat tool they curled up which I rather like.

For tag 3 I added some stenciling also, to fit in with the other two tags. I then used my favourite butterflies from the Papillion set, stamped them first straight onto the tag and then again, fussy cut them and coloured them with Distress Markers. I also used a stamp from the Odds and Ends set and some remnant rubs.

Finally for tag 4 the stamping is from the Mercantile set (I am totally in love with that bottle). The feather is from Spellbinders again and the word Autumn was cut out from a piece of Core'dinations card embossed with a texture fade. To echo the first tag I also ran it through a seasonal strip embossing folder.

 All 4 tags were then first mounted on to pieces from Tim's latest 8 by 8" paper collection, I added some more stenciling and inking to these pieces first and then I mounted them all onto a piece of dark brown mount board and further embellished with some die cuts and the words Remember the Now made from the little chip board letters. The final touch was an altered Ornate Plate (using more Distress Paints), and then mounted onto a Weathered Clock die which was also painted and rusted up with various Distress Embossing powders and some Antiquities Verdigris etc.

The text in the opening is from the Mercantile set.

I had so much fun creating this piece and obviously will be adding it to Linda's Challenge. This first challenge is sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium

Well hope you like my piece and have a fantastic week!

Thank you for visiting and make sure to stay inky!!