day 16 | Tim inspired tag

I *ADORE* the Tim Holtz 12 tags of Christmas. It’s like taking 12 mini “Tim” classes in awesomeness. I always come away with new ideas and techniques I’m reminded to do more often.

That said, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post this is a time of year when multi-tasking is a good idea, and time is as short as daylight is! SO! My solutions are several, the first being that I wanted to play so I mixed & matched some techniques from Tags 4, 6, and 7. Mix & match works great as well because I don’t have a lot of the things Tim uses, so it allows me to play without frustration of wishing I had the ‘right’ thing to make stuff happen.

True story: I am AWFUL at remembering “how-to”. What happens EVERY SINGLE TIME is that I think I remember it right, set off on my own, then end up changing things because I mixed up ideas or products. Whoops. Sometimes (ahem, my attempt at tag 5) it ends in disaster and frustration. Other times, I end up with something unique and made of awesome. My snowman falls (luckily) into the awesome category. 

I wanted to do the painted foil technique Tim did (tag 6), because I LOVE that foil sheet stuff, and I thought I could combine that look with the die cut within a die cut (tag 4). So here’s what I did/how it went down:

foil placed face down on cutting mat, grunge paper set on top and pressed firmly onto it. Then die cut in snowman shape. THEN I ran it back through the die cut machine using my brick texture fade. I wanted to use snowflakes or something Christmas-y… but alas I do not have any that would work!

Ok, I love it JUST LIKE THAT. ah I’m such a fan of the foil… anyhow! I wanted to do that AWESOME enamel paint thing, so I pulled out paint. Err… except my paint is pretty much all neutral colors. SO I did pearl + silver (which is a darker silver than the foil), but I also dotted a bit of blue alcohol ink on.

As you can see it ended up blending, becoming a bit too subtle too. That’s ok, I have a plan. First I die cut a snowflake out of him, then I sanded him lightly to get some of the foil showing back through. The sanding block worked fine for this – will be totally doing the technique again!

Ah but here’s where I wanted to keep kicking it up more notches. What I really wanted was more BLUE… but distress ink really ain’t gonna stick here. Oh wait – but I could cover it with UTEE and then it would be sealed in. (I know Tim talked about this in one of the tag posts)

But it wasn’t enough, so I did it again with distress stain and re-coated + re-embossed. Above you see the “before heat gun gets involved” version…

Now we are talking!!! I added some kraft paper + glossy accents inside/behind the die cut area and set frosty aside to dry…

Time for the tag. I just did the usual ‘put inks on craft mat, swipe damp tag through’ classic Tim Holtz technique. I then stamped a flourish with pearl dabber paint.

There wasn’t quite as much color on the background as I wanted so I “splatted” my distress stains a bit on there. Roll with it…

Bam! there you have it – my finished tag! The snowflake that got die cut is up at the top along with a metal charm I used snow cap + blue alcohol ink on (and then sanded). My trim was white – I used faded jeans stain + water to dye it.

Three tags into one, and in a way that is uniquely my own. *LOVE THAT*

I can’t suggest enough that you read up www.timholtz.typepad.com for ideas, tutorials, and videos from this series. It’s a seriously awesome Christmas gift from him that I enjoy every year now.

I just LOVE the color + texture I wound up with on this tag. Here are links to the supplies I used:

Happy crafting + creative play time!!