I dream of a November to Remember

I'm really, really late in posting my tag this month. I have a great excuse though - for the past couple of weeks I've been studying like mad for a job interview that took place on the 12th. Worth all the trouble though - I got the job! From a date still to be decided (but soon) I will no longer be a Health, Safety and Wellbing Assistant (admin) with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Instead I will be a Health and Wellbeing Technician (Occupational Health) with the same employer. So the title of my job doesn't get any shorter, and the team I'll be working in will be the same, but I'll just have a different role in it. And a bigger salary. :-) Lots of driving around Central Scotland, lots of new stuff to learn, lots of firefighters to do medical tests on, and after 39 years chained behind an office desk that's just a tad scary. Wish me luck.

Anyhoo, my tag. 

I don't have the blueprint pumpkin stamp, and in any case had already decided that whatever this month's tag was like, I just HAD to use some of the items that Tim sent me last month (God bless that man).

When I saw the Autumn theme, I immediately thought of using the leaf dies I was given and making a tag with falling leaves and a heart (I do love the colours of Autumn) but then Tim went and did a post about leaves, so that was that.

In the event, I used the compass blueprint stamp I won in the monthly prize, just the outside part like Tim did with the pumpkin.    Here's the tag...

To start with, I swooshed the tag with Spun Sugar distress stain, and dried it with my heat gun. I inked the Rays stamp with some watermark ink and stamped that near the bottom of the tag. Then I swiped horizontal lines of Chipped Sapphire, Dusty concord, stormy sky, and dried marigold inks from ink pads on my craft sheet, spritzed that with water and then pressed the tag into it, being careful to not twist it. That way I created a look of the sky at sunrise, going from dark to light from top to bottom.  The watermark stamp gives an impression of crepuscular rays. Fab. I added a touch more chipped sapphire to the edges and the very top of the tag.

I didn't have the gold foil, but I did have some gold leaf left over from a leafing job I did on a firefighter helmet. It's a long story..

So, I put a wee bit of that at the bottom of the tag. Horrible messy stuff to work with, I'll be picking bits of gold off my workspace for days. Then I stamped the outside part of the compass stamp on the top part of the tag.

I cut some clouds out of watercolour paper using the movers and shakers die, then coloured them using the watercolour technique like Tim used on the pumpkin.  I then used tim's technique to embossthem so they looked a little puffy (hard to see this in the photo) and used a Krylon gold leafing pen along the bases of each cloud and layered them near the bottom of the tag.

I think this airplane stamp is my all time favourite.  I stamped this In black, added a few touches of stormy sky and dusty concord then embossed it with clear embossing powder. Just love this stamp.

The words - One Day I'll Fly Away - is just my dream that next year I will get to fly off for a holiday of a lifetime to the USA. I'm trying to get my hubby to agree to a tour of the West Coast for my 60th in November next year. He's ignored all efforts so far. Tsk.

Lastly, I used some of the Correspondence tape as a tie for the tag and added a globe charm on a loop pin.  I highlighted the globe with krylon pen and a touch of stormy sky. All done.

Oops, reflections...

Oh, and another thing. I bought this lot recently from someone in a Facebook craft sell/swap group. Can't wait to make a mini album with them (or several). They have a date of 2006, so before I caught the crafting bug.  The ruler binding is made of chipboard, but an obvious forerunner of the ruler binding we can get now.  Just thought that was interesting.

Little IKEA frame

I've seen the flip frame that Tim does, 

love it, want it,  but it's quite a lot of money to spend on something that isn't an item I can play and make a mess with. But I went to IKEA the other week to buy some new shelves for my craft room (again) and I found this little white plastic 'Tolsby' frame for £1. Yes, £1.

It's no thing of beauty, but I thought maybe I could give it a makeover, and if it didn't work out then I've not lost a lot.

I sanded it down lightly because it was quite shiny, and then coated it with some black gesso to give key for the next layer which was some American Craft silver paint. Once that dried I gave the edges a going over with some DecoArts black antiquing cream (think black acrylic would be just as good). 

It looked a little bland.  I probably should have stuck some bits and pieces on it at the start to give it some texture, live and learn. What I did have though was some Industrious Stickers Borders

So I stuck these on the frame and it looked great.

Here's the finished item

Just thought it was an idea to pass on. £1. Jeez.

Yay!

'Nuff said, really.😀❤️

Showing off, just a bit

Well, wouldn't you?  After all the discombobulating surprise of being contacted by Tim Holtz over my October tag, and being so chuffed with his comments, and not a little (actually a LOT) excited by the fantastic array of Halloween goodies that arrived in the post, I just had to find a way of keeping all that wonderful memory intact.  And yes, show off a bit. I don't get called 'brilliant' and 'amazing' very often. I like it.

So here is my memory box frame (IKEA Ribba frame), containing my tag and a scaled down version of the original email from tim and using many of the items that he sent to me.  This one is going on the wall, right in full view of my desk, so if I get a little stuck I can have a look and be encouraged to stick with it. 

Thanks again Tim and Mario, I've calmed down a little now, but still grinning quietly to myself. So lucky.

Oh, and a little decoration I did using the leaves die set I also was given.

 

These dies are gorgeous.  I cut out the leaves using a mix of papers, some of them Kraft core, some not, but all good autumn colours, or as near as I could find in my stash.  Once I had done that I distressed them by sanding edges, inking with a mix of frayed burlap and barn door distress inks, splattered them with black distress stain (from a tooth brush) to make a few black spots here and there and then covered with rock candy crackle paint.   The leaves curled all on their own as this dried.  A few of the smallest oak leaves are painted with bronze crackle paint for extra interest. 

I used a sizzix fancy chevrons card front die as a background, and distressed a piece of ribbon with mustard seed and vintage photo stains.  Not bad for a first attempt, I love the colours, very lifelike but in miniature.

 It looks like I've raided someone's bonsai garden.

Spooky Doings - Tim's Tag for October

*I love the Zombie die (and the others) that Tim used to make this months tag, but this being the UK, and therefore a month or two away from these being available, quite a lot of improvisation was required this month.

I love the dimensionality (is that even a word?) in Tim's tag, and wanted a similar 3D effect. Had no idea how to achieve it so slept on it. Amazing how your brain works, I woke up remembering I had a stash of Tim's Kraft resist Halloween themed papers, and that there was a skeleton in there somewhere.  But once I had a look I realised that the witch would be perfect for this tag, because I could colour her green to reflect Tim's tag.  And frankly she was a lot easier to layer than the skellie.

So, this is the paper, befor chopping it up

I cut out all the witch faces from one sheet, and coloured them lime green using an American Craft stamp pen as I didn't have that colour in distress pen, though I used other ones to add shading.  I then used 3 different layers to build up her face, including cheekbones, eyebrows and eyes.

Layers!

I had to cut out and layer up her hat to make it pointy, (otherwise she would be a witch from Wales) and used picket fence pen to whiten her teeth and pupils.

The background for the tag is from Tim's 8x8 Seasonal Stash, as are the 'spooky' letter squares.  I didn't have the splatter layering stencil or the black distress stain Tim used so I mixed up a bit of iced spruce and weathered wood stains and dribbled that on the background to get a similar effect, and used a random round er..thing I found in my drawer to get a 'coffee cup' stain.

I coloured some white rayon ribbon, added a spider charm and also a bit of orange rickrack to finish to tag.

 I like the wee ghostie peeking out from the back :-)

Here's a picture of everything I used, apart from a heat gun, which wouldn't fit in the picture. 

Okay, I forgot about it. :-/. Oh, and some fasteners and a loop pin.

And yes, that's a toffee hammer, used to bash a dent in the fasteners. Needs must.

I was so chuffed with this one I posted it in Facebook.  Couldn't wait for Halloween!

*****************************************************************************************************************************

Well it seems that I wasn't the only one to like this tag as, after posting my link to his 12 Tags blog, TIM HOLTZ (the MAN HIMSELF) emailed and said I was 'brilliant'! 

Woot, wooty woot woot!

I can't tell you all how overwhelmed I am with everyone's kind words, thank you to all who left a message, I really, really appreciate it.  You know how it is with crafting, it's like creating in a bubble with not much contact with the 'outside world' and to get this response is just gobsmacking.

Pressure's on for next time now!

*****************************************************************************************************************************

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!  

Tim's August Tag

Oo, I liked doing this one.  Lots of lovely layers, and that's something that I ok usually struggle with.  And because of all the lovely layers it actually SITS FLAT as opposed to my usual efforts that end up a bit crumpled.  I used a black tag on the reverse as I've got quite a few of these that I never use.

I used pretty much all the same items and techniques that Tim used, except that my main figure was cut from his collage paper stash (8x8).  He looks so miserable that, along with the bronze spackled distress paint, it inspired the phrase I used (spread a little sparkle wherever you go).  My cut out words are from the Friends collection as I didn't have the dies used by Tim, but worked just as well.  The vial label at the top the tag I replaced with a 7 Gypsies label, which I aged a little by smudging with distress ink.

So here's the finished tag