Summer's End

Okeydokey.  The last days of summer are gone, and the autumn equinox has just occurred, so we are properly into autumn now.  But we still have a few bees buzzing about the flowered in the garden, and it is sunny today, so that's a bonus.

The only items that he used, that I had, for Tim's September tag were the Manila and Black tags, a word band and the fasteners, and some of the inks; everything else I had to improvise.  However, I like how it turned out.  

For the background of the tag I used some iridescent glossy card that I found in my stash, and having decided to use a little bee stamp instead of butterflies, I used green, gold and yellow colours of Ranger alcohol inks to colour (sunshine yellow, ginger, sunset orange, butterscotch, meadow, and a tiny bit of stream) to represent honey.  As I didn't have the glossy texture paste I cut some acetate using Tim's honeycomb die to use instead, stuck over the background.. The Manila card is stained with fossilised amber and stormy sky spray stain. These are actually the only 2 colours of spray stain that I have so far acquired, but they work well with this colour scheme which was lucky!

The stamp is one I think I bought in Hobbycraft, and is by Knorr prandell creative.  I didn't have the frosted film so used some Wendy Vecchi modelling film, and was able to lift and shape the bee wings using a heat gun. I also put a tiny dab of DecoArt Media fluid acrylics in interference green on the bee wings and coloured the bee bodies using a Promarker in bright orange.  A bit of ribbon was stained with squeezed lemon and vintage photo stains to complete the tag.

The iridescence gives a lovely effect, hard to photograph though!  

May Day May Tag

It's the holiday weekend, and of course it is raining.  We were intendingto go to Dobbies for bedding plants and stuff for the hanging baskets, but the rain gave me an excuse to stay indoors and play about in my craft room.  I recently ordered some new dies and embossing folders from the fantastic Sizzix sale, which arrived on Friday, so I was dead keen to get in there and start messing with them.  Spent a while unwrapping and examining them all, as you do, and it was only when I started to do my May tag that I realised that one of the items I ordered is missing, so I will have to ring Sizzix and get that sorted.  I ordered the movers and shapers old jalopy and arrow, but it was not there and it would have been great on this tag - I was going to use the jalopy in place of the butterfly that Tim put on his, but never mind.

Tim's tag did not have a theme, but he made it with the advice to crafters to stop hoarding all our ideology charms and stuff, and actually get it out and use them in our projects.  LOL, that's me. Got a drawer full.

 Tim's May tag showcased ideology bits and pieces, so I had lots of those to choose from.  Anyway, I'd decided to make mine on a travel theme, old jalopy or no, so here it is:

I did not have the Shadowpress embossing folders that Tim used, but found that one of the Texture Fades embossing folders from a set called 'Travel Signs' ( one of the folders I had just received) had some partly debossed words in it, so I used the word TRAVEL from the embossing folder.  Using his ink technique, where you ink the actual folder before inserting the. paper and putting it through the embossing machine was a bit scary, but it worked a treat and the leftover ink did come off the plastic with a bit of buffing with a baby wipe, so that was alright.  The little train is made of wood and is from a set I got in Hobbycraft.  I inked it with felt pens and embossed it with several coats of embossing powder, including a dip into silver embossing powder at the end, to metallise the wheels.

The white bird in the frame at the top is cut for another texture fade embossing folder (called Patchwork) which i embossed on white card and Then gave 3 layers of clear embossing powder to turn it into a 'charm'.  The chipboard frame it is in was one I had In a drawer, out of the packet so no idea who makes it it was originally cream with blue glitter, but I gave it several coats of silver embossing and then pressed a paisley patterned rubber stamp into it before it cooled down.

All the other items are Tim Holtz, including the background papers which are a mixture of his Retro Grunge and Seasonal stashes.  

The only thing I would change would be to use thicker chipboard behing each item.  Mine is quite thin and it looks too much like I've just stuck bits of paper behind each piece. Tsk.

My other project today was another altered metal biscuit tin.  I got this one from a charity shop a couple of weeks ago, and after I took the sticky labels off I stuck some embossed metal tape on it, added a Tim Holtz drawer pull and a dymo label.  I then swiped it with DecoArts Traditions raw umber acrylic paint, rubbed some of that off before it was totally dry, then dabbed it with Ranger alcohol inks in Rust, Espresso, Bottle and Pool..  This is another box for husband who after having walked the dog, cooked the dinner, brought me sustenance and coffee throughout the day today, is now vacuuming the floors to make me feel guilty for having closeted myself away in my craft room.  Not working though, I'm still here, and I'm not moving.

I've been doing a lot with this metal tape recently.  Gone a little metal mental tbh.  Here are some more charity shop finds that I have 'improved'.  Or so I like to think!  

Cheery.