Tim Holtz - 12 Tags of 2014- April entry

Well hello bloggerkins’

I am 10 days shy of the deadline again.  I have excuses but more about that later.  Let me show you my April 2014 entry.

There are only a few tags and pieces that I have created that have escaped my habit of excessive judgement and catapulted straight into my ideal of awesomeness. This tag is definitely going to be one of them. It was so fun to make and it turned out so beautifully that even though I made it as the front of a card – I dont think that I am going to give it away, I dont actually know what I am going to do with it – but I am going to keep it all for my selfsome.

 It involved glossy and crackle accents, splashing paint, and some Macguyvering.  I think I might have also unintentionally developed a concerning crush on washi tape in the process. 


Anyway, my interpretation of the Mr Tim’s inspired work this month, took flight from this one simple image from the line of stamps that was featured in last month’s tag challenge. 

I stamped it onto stamping paper cut to 1/3rd of an A4 sheet, I am all about those tall trifolds right now.  Ranger Inkssentials Specialty Stamping Paper is my new favourite medium to work on.  It kind of looks and feels like shoe-filler board.  But don’t be fooled - this stuff is bloody awesome and will make you buy shoes just to see if you can get the same effects from the shoe-filler (ask me how I can vouch for that?). I swear on every Sizzix die that I own, right from your juicy stamp not sliding at all, to how it reacts with dyes, chalks and paint to get fantastic textural and special colour effects, I have never met any undesirable moments with these sheets of pure brilliance. 

I don’t love the Pinecone die as much as I love my other ones.  Firstly, I think I have a defective die cos it doesnt cut all the way through on the last 3 outside petals of the spiral. There unfortunately was a stupid thought that I could remedy the no-cut woes by “tempering” the die with one of my Spellbinders Tan embossing mats.  BAD MACGUYVER MOMENT!!!  I now have a curious tan siliconey rubber pinecone spiral.
Eventually, I realised that shimming in just the right outside petal spots with folded newspaper pieces makes the die even enough to cut a perfect die-cut.  

Secondly, have you ever met anyone with infinite amounts of  patience to roll up loads of those pine-rones (Yes I just made up that word – work it out – you’ll want to say pine-rones too, I promise, seriously, do it, do it now……see……)?  Having said that – I forced myself to engage with the die and made a whole lotta pine-rones! Look there on the right and below that on the left – you know why?  Cos I ‘rone like that!!

I bought these Idea-ology tag fragment thingies ages ago and never got around to using them, so even though I have those metal word tag token thingies – I decided that the sentimespiration (Yup, invented that one too)would be this month’s test of “use-your-holtzings-in-different-ways” personal challenge.  Love how this turned out darlings…. I love Ranger’s Archival Ink to stamp on anything – more than I love that other brand that promises to stick on anything, you know the one, the ones where they dry up real quick and stays on things you dont want it to stay on, and stays off the things you want it to stay on.

I think making the branch look all gnarly and dimensional was defo a highlight for me too.

I had fun with the Frameworks die-cuts too. Some Macguyvering there too, but good Macguyver had come out as the dominant personality this time.  Did I say that I loved making this tag yet?

I confess that I haven’t been around to everyone’s of late.  In my real-life I sometimes have to put in extra attention to my work at my day job.  Recently I presented a paper at the UJ Phenomenology and Naturalism conference in Johannesburg and I kind of got distracted with getting that into shape. 

I do not like Jo’burg city in general, whenever I am there I always feel like I am looking in on the set of some kind of Dystopian Novel turned into a movie-set.  But I may be biased because I grew up on one of the Tropical Coasts of my country, and I way prefer my lush part of the world with minimal concrete and it’s natural beauty to the concrete jungle of the Goldmine City.   What I do love about Jo’burg though is it’s amazing twilight and dusk sky. Check this picture out that I took from the balcony of the place that I was bunking in for the duration of the conference.  Isn’t that just a Distress Ink Palette?  Going to have to do something with this skyline and colours soon.  That’s it for me today – catch you soon…ish!

Artful Dwellings Altered!!!

 

I collect them you see, like a sick collector.  I buy them and then I get like all precious about them.  So you know how like Comic book collectors have comics from the 1950’s still in their original packaging?  I get that anal and holy about my Tim Holtz stuff. 

To be fair to myself, it’s not entirely all nerdy-geek sacrosanctity.  There is a legitimate economic consideration – owing to the Rand/Dollar exchange I pretty much have to drink cabbage soup for the rest of the month whenever I do a little “Holtzbinging” which then make these items the more financially valuable items I own.  Seriously, they are on the same level of parity to bottles of perfume and 14K jewelry.  There are large appliances in my house that are worth less than my Holtz collection.   

But I digress.  Back to the story – I noticed the other day, after Chairman Mau had installed some shelves in my office, and I felt the need to put stuff on them, that I had all these lovely virgin dies. 

See, I would bring them home, but I would feel like using them right away to cut through hard cardstock and vividly busy patterned paper would just be wrong – like an insult, an affront to their dignity, a blatant disrespect for their reverent selves.  So they would sit, I would feel like when the time was right, I would have that devout conviction in my heart that it was time.   Chairman Mau had spent the whole week doing major house alterations in my dwelling and turned it into something artful.  The time had come. All the signs were there. That for me was the unchallengeable silent whisper that it was time to use the Artful Dwellings die.  

But like when you go on some insane juice only detox cleanse and then when it comes to the day you get to eat solids – you binge on all the cake, cheese, biscuits and icecream in the store – I went a little nuts and overcompensated for my asceticsim regarding the dies – I even altered the die-cuts.  I cut out all the lovely whole shapes, then I wanted to turn them into little houses, so (“gasp, shock, horror”) I cut them up, and then cut those pieces up even more so that the roofs looked like roofs and the walls looked like walls.  To add insult to this irreverence – I even went in and inked those bits up in loud, loud colours.  I inked all over Mr Tims lovely designer paper, I stamped on them, I even embossed them -----Lord have mercy!!! 

You would have thought my insolence would have stopped there – but no – posessed by a demonic alteration spirit, I went and busted out the Hanging Sign and Hardware Findings Dies. I freakin’ cut those up too!   I was watching Once Upon a Time while all of this was happening – which may or may not explain why the design turned out like the cover of a storybook.

A few things that I discovered along the way apart from the fact that “magic always comes with a price” and that when the Chairman Mau calls me “dearie” I want to call him “Rumpel”.  If you unravel bits of paper rope, stick it down in all its unravelled but crinklyness, and your distress ink it madly with a bunch of different colours, you might end up with a cool woodgrain texture –

TRUE STORY – look here on the right –>

I wanted the wrought iron to look wrought and hammered and like it is about to break out into orangey rust song. So I sprinkled some medium grain salt into some distress embossing powder.  I mean if I am going to be altering the integrity of products – I am going big, nothing in small, controlled measures for me baby!  I love the regular distress embossing powder – but the salt addition just made it ever so slightly distress-ier.  Liked that – got to remember to do that again.

 

For the inside of the card – the sentiment is related to the spirit of the house alterations the Chairman has been doing and the gentle way he has encouraged me to  mentally/spiritually “evolve”,let go and faith forward toward love and living. 

My new favourite distress effect thing to do is to stamp stuff in Archival Ink in the same tone as the that which I am going to blend around it.  I then roughly paint over that in clear gel medium – trying to get in as much brushstroke around the edges as possible.  Then I go all out with some serious Distress Staining, Inking and spatter brushing.  I really love this effect.

For the personal message part that I was writing on, I got a little philosophically artsy- fartsy. The idea was to distress ink in happy, bright, contrasty colours, the “Cracked glass”  Stencil from the Holtz line (YEAY – Still so excited that I got me some Stencils) to signify the moment of moving from broken toward brighter, happier things.

 

 

TIM HOLTZ MARCH TAG 2.0– I got me some stencils–yeah baby yeah!

So Mr Tim was in the country and did a retailers workshop and he brought with him some stencils.  Now I didn’t get to confiscate his luggage at the airport like Toni suggested I should, nor did I get to go to the workshop because it was too far away from where I live and I had work commitments among other things and so I drooled as my Holtz-happy friends Venesia Ramsey, Ethne LeRoux and Pamla Nagappa tweeted a running commentary on all the fun that they were having there. 

When Venesia and Ethne returned – Aunty Ethne sent me a lovely message saying that they had brought back a whole bunch of stencils (previously unavailable in South Africa) and that she had kept a set aside for me to get first dibs on.  I LOVE AUNTY ETHNE! 

 So I flew out of my office the quickest that I could and went around to get my greedy hands on some stencils.  So long story short I HAVE STENCILS – not just any only stencils – the bonafide Tim Holtz release of stencils.  Ofcourse now I am going to have to remake the March Tag because I have everything needed – the Sprtizer, the stencils and more importantly – the enthusiasm!!!!



So here is the March Tag 2.0.  Its the version that uses all the legitimate supplies like the proper stencils and the spritzer.  Had way too much fun mucking around with this – I just had to post!  I am going to submit this one too to the TH BLOG for March – am I allowed to do that?  I mean can we submit more than one project, it turned out so brilliantly I think, I really, really want to share it.  Yeah, I think I am going to post it - they will kick me out if I did do something naughty.
  
Some details that I was super happy with were the triple stamped feather, all slightly offset by a few micromillimetres and the white shadow-stamped.  Loved how it gave it shadow and more dimension. 

I liked it when I accidentally tried to clean up a spatter brush leak under the stencil by water-brushing it and it created a yummy watercoloured blending that made both the stencilled spatter pop but also made the hand the key focal point.


I love the shadows here,  I stamped on acetate and used some some gold paint to paint the enamel dots.  It reminds me those little glass plaques they have on displays at museums or those kinds of places.









I washi-taped and baker’s twined and hemp twined to draw attention to the wordband.  I swiped on Salty Ocean Distress Paint over the top and then cleaned off where I didnt want the paint to go.  I liked this particular band because “Chairman Mau” have spent a few good hours talking about self re-invention and learning to be the better versions of ourselves.



I think the Glossy Accented speckled egg and bug wings were my favourite bit of this tag – but that could very well be more about my obsession with Glossy Accents than anything more profound.

I am giving this tag to the “Chairman” ofcourse – because of the sentimentality of that wordband – “Life is about creating yourself” and also because he just spent the last couple of days doing all kinds of handyman jobs around the house, for free, cos he’s lovely like that.

Masculine Card–Share 2

They say technology has brought the world closer. I can video chat in real time with anyone half way across the world at will.  I know exactly what some facebook acquaintance has had for dinner (with a picture). I get a blow by blow account of  how someone’s #baby-is-throwing up on #twitter.

Sure, these are great conveniences, it is awesome to be in instant touch with your friends and family and share information and sure, sometimes it maybe a little too much information – I have never been able to make myself have a dignified, undisgusted reaction to people sharing ALL parts of their bathroom experiences publically on social media (I am not even kidding about this). 

So despite the pros of instant electronic communication and connection – I have to admit that I am still a huge fan of old school, snail mail, or hard copy post.  I love getting letters and cards in my little post box.  I decided that I have to single-handedly start a old school post preservation revolution and send hand written letters and cards to people I care about. 

 I decided that my first order of business was to send one to the lovely “Chairman Mau” – I have blogged about the fabulous “Chairman” and how much I totally adore him before.  I mean seriously, I couldn’t not adore someone who will strike this face-pose with me in photo solidarity???? I really love people with a great sense of silly!

Did I mention that I also want to revolutionise my thematic staples for masculine cards?  In I put this together – and haven’t put it in the mail already – so I hope the Chairman doesn’t read this post before he goes to pick up his post at his postbox – it's going to be a surprise.

It’s a skinny tri-fold of A4 sheet.  I have a thing for Kraft cardstock so there it is.
Card front I finally played around with my Prima Doll stamps. I coloured them in with Distress Markers and watercolour pencils from Derwent. I took the liberty of altering the hair a bit to look a little more like me...

The card folds out to reveal two panel and then three panel layout.

I left one of the panels un-imaged so that I could write a more personal letter and attach it to the card.

This was an attempt of a merge between a uniquely personal and yet humourous card.

I didnt have a cheese stamp so I just drew it in with Distress Markers – and waterwashed around it to give it a bit of a frame.

I handwrote the “in-joke” sentiment/message with a Sakura white gelly roll pen on lightweight black cardstock.  

 What do you think? Who says boy cards have to be all tools, cars and gone-fishing like?

NB:  “Bosphorus” is one of those “in-endearments”….in case the grammar nazi in you is scratching your head!

12 Tags of 2014–March and the Spritzer

So Pinterest has become my Holy Grail of all types of inspiration and  innovation.   I have discovered a fantastic new “tool-set” in it.  I get a little anal about keeping things fresh and interesting.  The thing is, I am a chronic Distress Ink buyer….so I might have a pretty big collection of it and yet I find myself using the same old colours over and over again.  This doesn’t bode well in the quest to be fresh and interesting.  A while back I decided to start pinning colour schemes for rooms in my house I wanted to paint and then decorate.  I   clicked on my colour palettes board a few days ago and I had the equivalent of a crafty burning-bush episode – I thought to myself “Holy Moses – these schemes totally work for tag and card colour scheme inspiration”.  

So I have decided to pick one and go with it – for the Timmy Tag as well as whatever else I feel inspired to create this month.

I went with the first image that appealed to me and it happened to be this palette over here on the right.  Easy peasy Distress Ink squeezy?????  I figure all I have to do now is match up the Distress Inks to the closest approximation to the colour swatch right?  I dunno, let’s see what I can match up – here comes my next new tool – the Distress Ink Colour chart. 

So I am thinking I need to pick Spun sugar, Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers, Tumbled Glass/Broken China and Gathered Twigs or Walnut Stain – maybe??? 


Now – I am going to choose a stamp set to attempt this month’s technique – SMUDGE STAMPING and DISTRESS SPRITZING. It doesn’t hurt also that I have the Alterations Movers and Shapers Tattered Leaves Die set, for you know….if I want to add some texture or dimension.  I seem to be incapable of not adding some kind of 3D dimensional element to anything that I do.

Anyhow – let’s see how this goes.
I smudged stamped the big leaves and then coloured them in – because they were too contrasty with the the subtle smudge stamped effect outline, to blend in the muted tones I wanted – I washed out the the colour with a waterbrush.

 

I made my own stencil once again with the brick texture Strip die from Sizzix and used my new Spritzer.  Have to admit that I still trying to get the hang of it but I love the effect despite my clumsy attempts to confine the spray pattern to where I wanted it to go. I made the little Robin’s eggs out of airdry clay and spritzed that for a speckled egg look and then I glossy accented that. I added a few twigs here and there as well.
I am happy with how this turned out.  I am unusually into pinks and blues these days – dont know for sure why but I do suspect its because I am feeling very feminine and loving my femininity at the moment. 

A random share cos it was a lot of fun to make

 

A wonderfully sweet colleague of mine has accepted a more reliable position at another educational institution.  While we were sad to see her go, we were all so happy for her that she was able to secure a position where her future was more assured.  She is a sweet, wonderful, generous, intelligent and awesome lecturer, our institution’s failure to keep her is certainly a great loss.  So I was charged with the task of coming up with a card, that would show her that even though the institution let her down, she was meaningful and well loved by the department.

I really had so much fun making this card and thought I would share both the card and how I did it.

 

How I did it:

• For the Background layer:
• 
• I tore up bits of dictionary paper and made a collage of it.
• I inked that with Brushed Courdroy and Gathered twigs Distress Ink.
• Stamped butterflies from both the Stampers Anonymous range and Prima Marketing randomly all over that.
• Used White Picket fence Distress Stain to tone down the colour intensity while preserving a relatively crisp image.

 

• I wrinkled a piece of tissuepaper and podged it down on the first layer of the background.  I swiped that with Broken China Distress Ink and then overswiped with Faded Jeans Distress Ink.  This gave me a nice hint of a blue translucent colourwashed sky but allows you to still see the stamped background, the wrinklin added some lovely texture.

 

• The butterflies in flight are die-cut from Sizzix, Spellbinders and a made-in-china mini handheld punch.

 

• I used the Sizzix alteration Alphabet Typeset Strip die and the Quickutz Alphabet Parade Font dies to make the sentiment.

The “dreams” part of the sentiment is cut out of Cordinations Brown Linen Cardstock and then Glossy Accented. The rest is cut with the Sizzix Alphabet Typeset Strip Die and Glossy Accented. The Typeset die is new to my collection but it is fast becoming my go-to die for die-cut text.

 

 

• Not to be out done by the front of the card – the inside has a cute sentiment which I stamped first in White Picket fence Distress Paint and then lightly colourwashed over with various Distress Inks. I die-cut Umbrella Man and added more punch out butterflies.
• This was a group card for a lecturer so I thought it would be cute for the part where we are going to write our personal messages ,to be a notebook page, I used the Sizzix Alterations Notebook folder.

 

 

 

Tim Holtz 2014 February Challenge – A dear letter to Mr Tim

Dear Mr Tim

Ever since you brought out the glorious Stencil Line in your exquisite range of craft essentials, I have been salivating and waiting to get my hands on them.  Mr Tim – they have not arrived here in South Africa yet (sobs inconsolably).  I know because I looked everywhere for them Mr Tim, I even searched the stock inventory of all the South African online stores. 

Mr Tim – I am so sad, gutted, incapacitated, like a junkie without a fix, Mr Tim.  What makes me sadder Mr Tim is that the tags in the 12 Tags series seem to be always made super awesome by your expert handling of these stencilling babies to make them.  I want to try them too Mr Tim.  I want to play in the challenge so very, very bad Mr Tim, but the stencils haven’t arrived in my country yet Mr Tim – even the ones you brought out last year Mr Tim.It hurts my heart, I am about to write a sad country love song about it - this is pain Mr Tim, heart wrenching agony.
  

So I’ve been waiting and waiting and I finally couldnt help myself – I really wanted to make a tag for the 2014 February 12 Tags, but with no stencils available Mr Tim, I had to come up with a new plan.  So I used one of your sizzix movers and shapers butterflies and die-cut my own stencil out of cardstock(so that I could do that awesome graduated colour technique you shared).  You can’t see most of it in the finished tag, because it is covered up by the foreground elements Mr Tim – but it turned out friggin’ awesome Mr Tim. I put this picture here to show you exactly how friggin awesome the butterfly stencilling turned out.  I still wish I had your real stencils though Mr Tim.

So anyway Mr Tim my question to you and Mr Mario is – do you know why they don”t sell the stencils here in South Africa Mr Tim and Mr Mario?  I like them, I want them.  Also Mr Tim – I hope you don’t mind that I submit my made-a-plan stencil tag for the February challenge.  Which also makes me ask Mr Tim, the butterflies were so cute when I die cut my stencil with the movers and shapers Mr Tim,  – so can you make a butterfly stencil if you are designing more stencils, I will start saving for a plane ticket so that I can buy them in America if I have to? 

Thanks Mr Tim.

Tincan Crafter

(P.S I dont mean to offend anyone especially “Mr Tim” himself by writing this post this way, please accept it in the way it was written – to convey a strong adoration for Mr Tim, his products and his generous sharing of technique!)

Birthday card for Dad

My mom gave me an hour to come up with a birthday card from her for my dad's 59th birthday - this was it:

I mix and matched a bunch of different Tim Holtz, and Prima collections here - I am loving the ATC die from Sizzix/Holtz - so very handy!

Newest member of the clan!

 

Last week my nephew Luke made his entrance into the world.  Isn’t he just beautiful?  He looks so much like my brother did when he was born!

 

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of 2014 - January

With a few days left to cut-off – here is my reinterpretation of the January Tag presented by Tim Holtz.  I tried to keep the integrity of  the techniques and theme in as far as I used the masking and stencilling techniques on the background of the tag.  I used the Gadget Gears dies to cut out the Gears   I embossed the Gadget Gears with the Sizzix Gears folder.  From the Ideology line I used a few sprocket and minigears.  The sentiment reads:  “You turn all my Happy Gears” – that is cut from two different alphabet strip dies.  To make the tag my own – I added the fanciful Flight wings from the Alterations line and a few smaller thinlit type diecut gears from another company.  I seem to be slacking on this blog a bit….I know – really going to try to make up for it soon.