Tim's December Tag

Hello everyone, and thanks for dropping by! So I thought my previous post would be my last before Christmas, and then I remembered I had not posted my Tim tag for this month, so just a quick post to show you my version:

Now Tim's original, like always can be seen HERE. I loved his December tag, but apart from the sprays and, inks and greenery, I don't have any of the things he used, so I just did my own version, sticking to my usual size 8 on top of size 10 tag.
My reindeer is from Tando Creative, as I don't have the die Tim used.

I glittered my deer, but without the help of the tea gadget that Tim used, I just sprinkled it on some glossy accents. As I don't have the tinsel, my little bells are just tied around his neck with some white string.

I cut and coloured my greenery pretty much like Tim showed, but arranged it slightly differently and added some tiny red berries for a little patch of colours.
My size 10 tag was embossed with  a snowflake embossing folder and then sprayed and inked like the little one.

At the top I added the month again, as I have done every month this year. And I also added the word journey, a theme rather big for me right now, in more ways than one. (It also happens to be the only word die I own...) I glittered it like the deer, which like usual is hard to see on the photo.

Well, that's it pretty much. Wishing you all a great season, hope you will find some time to relax and be creative too!
I am adding this to Tim's tag challenge of course.

Thanks for visiting like always

Tag time and happy mail!

Hello everyone and lovely to have you visiting! Welcome to followers old and new.
Today I want to share my Tim Holtz November tag. The original can of course be found HERE.

I followed Tim's instructions pretty much exactly, so I won't go into how I made it as you can read all about that on Tim's blog. I just used a different colour scheme, as here in Scotland, the Autumn colours have pretty much disappeared, so I kept it more wintery. The colours I used were Antique Linen, Pumice Stone and Aged Mahogany, for the background, and Walnut Stain and Brushed Pewter on the corrugated card.

I don't have the Ranger foil, so I used Pebeo instead, it's actually much lighter gold than it came out on the photos, so really goes quite well with the pewter colour, even though I normally would not mix gold and silver....

I did not have the embellishments Tim used, so used a word band and enamel number instead.

I decided at the beginning of the year to mount all of my 12 tags on a larger size 10 tag, so stuck with that idea, here is the background to the larger tag:

I painted the tag with Snow White Fresco Finish paint and then spritzt with Brushed Pewter, Iced Spruce and Walnut Stain sprays and did a little bit of background stamping too.

I cut a little tab for the top with the tiny tags and tabs die out of silver Mirri card and then aged it with Brushed Pewter and Walnut Stain sprays. When I heat set it, it started to bubble and gave a cool metal effect, - great new discovery that..

I added the month with the little Tim Holtz letter stickers, sanding them a bit first to distress them, a cool trick I learnt from the wonderful Paula Cheney a while back.

I adhered the smaller tag onto the larger one at a slight angle and that was pretty much it.

Now while I was at it, I decided to turn the leaf which had been cut from corrugated card into a Christmas card, using a very similar colour scheme:

I decorated the inside of my card in a similar way as my previous set of cards, as all the stamps etc were still on my desk.

Well, that's it for today. I'll be back on Friday when there is a new challenge over at A Vintage Journey.

I am of course adding my tag to Tim's Tag Challenge for November. Not much time to spare, but at least I made it...

Now to the Happy Mail: A while back I did some translating for the wonderful Dagmar, who lives in Germany and struggles with English. Well, look what arrived in the post a couple of days ago:

This stunning tag! It was a project she posted on the Countryview Challenge blog as she was a winner and I helped her translating the description, it's so stunning!

But, that was not all, look at this:

A stunning little folder, not only beautiful, but practical too, for inside it looks like this:

There is a space to keep notes: Gift ideas, To do list,  shopping list and Christmas cards.
Such a clever and practical idea.

And last but not least, a lovely little desk calendar booklet:

Love the mail art style of the covers!

Here is the inside:

Thank you sooooo much Dagmar!!!

Well that is it for now. Have a fantastic week everyone!!

Message in a Bottle

Hi everyone, thanks for dropping in here!

After grandly announcing two days ago that it was going to be very quiet here during July, I am actually back after all sooner than expected because I could not resist doing my Tim Holtz July tag.
This definitely was one of my favourites this year, even though mine has turned out completely differently....

Two reasons for that, first of all, I had none of the main supplies he used, so I had to think of different things. Second reason, - his is a very summery tag, but it's really only summer in half of the world. I am going off today to Australia and there as in the whole Southern Hemisphere it is winter, and as I was busy packing my winter things, I just could not get into a summery mood. Having said that, I still managed to use all of the techniques he used, be it in somewhat different colours.
So here goes, following Tim's brilliant tutorial:
I took some grunge paper (don't have any grunge board) die cut my shapes and coloured them with various Distress Paints, added the Rockcandy Crackle when dry and rubbed and heat set the stain to show up the cracks.:

Here's a close up of the bottle:

Next the embossing powder onto the wet paint, I did it on a large leaf rather than the sand dollar and used several colours of powder, for a more wintry effect.

Next came the background to the tag using Distress Paints, Stains, Ink, water splats and the Spritzer tool:

Again, sticking to more wintry colours.
Next came the cool technique with the plastic through an embossing folder. Well, that one had me stumped for quite a while. Then it hit me, why not create a second bottle and put the sand inside the bottle.

So this is what I did: I cut the bottle out of grunge paper first and coloured and crackled it like the first bottle.
Next I cut the bottle again, but this time out of plastic packaging. I ran it through the Harvest Words embossing folder, just picking out the word Love. It embossed it beautifully. I coloured the word with a Faber Castell Big Brush pen and let it dry while making my "sand mixture with more or less the same supplies Tim used. Glued it onto the base bottle and then glued the plastic one on top with the sand inside. I just could not manage to photograph it properly, below, you can maybe see it a bit better:

Ok, so time to put the tag together.....
Now I decided at the beginning of the year that I would make layered tags, a size 8 on top of a size 10, so I made another background, using the same technique but adding some tissue tape here and there for a bit of variation.

Next I picked a word band, using Tim's technique of bringing out the word with paint and then put it all together.

Well, there you have it, an wintry version of Tim's July tag. I have the sea horse etc on order, so I may do a summery version still when I come back.

Thank you for all your kind visits like always and hopefully you get to do something creative most days! I'd also like to thank Tim for showing us all these fab techniques, month after month!!!

Look after yourselves

"Good Friends" Tim's January Tag

Hello everyone and welcome! A special welcome also to new followers, thank you so much for joining me here for my creative journey.
Well, today I want to share a tag inspired by no other than the wonderful Tim Holtz

As most of my visitors are  likely making their own, I don't need to say much by way of introduction, but if by any chance you don't know about Tim's wonderful monthly challenge, you can find out all about it HERE.

Now as some of you know, despite me having loved Tim's creations ever since I found out about them probably way back in 2008 or so, I have never followed his tag challenges, until last year that is when I managed to do two of them. But after completing Tim's Creative Chemistry 102 and having so much fun with it, I decided that this year I would join in with all of his tags.... wish me luck....

Anyway, like most people I had to do some adaptation as I don't own many of the products he used, but that was half the fun of it.
I did my background pretty much just like Tim. One of my favourite bits was the sanded down rub-ons, just love the distressed look of that, here's my version:

I don't have the pocket watch die nor any cog embossing folders, but I do have some Wendy Vecchi pocket watch art parts, so decided to use one of them and filled it with some rusted watch parts, purchased unrusted on ebay and then rusted with rusting powder from Crafty Notions. I embedded them in Glossy Accents and I have to say, I like the result.

I happened to have one of those tickets Tim used in my box of scraps, and as I wanted my tag to be about friendships in the arty crafty world, which have started to mean so much to me over the years, I themed both my stamped sentiment and my chit chat stickers around that.

After adding the stickers I added a bit of shading to make them pop a bit more.
I added a bit of seam binding at the top of my tag, coloured with Pumice Stone and added a type charm, just with the letter J for January

It's one of those little letter stickers mounted on a scrap of inked card.
Finally I decided it all looked a bit cramped on the #8 tag, so I mounted the whole tag on a #10 tag that I inked and stamped first and then added a January tab too. I will do this for all of my tags I think and then put them together in a little book at the end of the year.

Full of good intentions like always........

Well, that's it, tag number one done, can't wait for the next one now. I am guessing it may well include the new hearts stencil, I have got it on order, but will it be available by Feb?????Anyway, running ahead of my self like usual.....

Hope you like my version of the tag and of course I will be adding it to Tim's January Challenge

Thank you for visiting and have a creative day!!