#12tagsof2015 March

LOVE these techniques.  This went together really easily for me.  My lent inspired tag.  If you are so inclined youtube "oceans, where feet may fail". 

Check out 12 tags of 2015 at http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2015-march/

#12tagsof2015 february

#12tagsof2015 January

compendium of curiosties 3 challenge #2 - Distress Glitter gift card holder

Follow the challenge here:  compendium of curiosities 3

And my pinterest board here:  craftcupboard under the stars CC3C

Finished Gift card box

Used Tim Holtz picked raspberry, mowed grass, peacock feathers and pumice stone disress glitter.  Picked raspberry and peacock feathers stain.  Peacock feathers distress ink and paint.

Cut paper rounds to fit top and bottom.  Run through Zyron and stick them on cheese box

Ink side of bottom

wrap bottom with ribbon (also ran through the Zyron)

Paint side of top with distress paint (I used 2 coats and used drying tool after both),  Decorate as per above

No autocad required

I mass produced these cards for our office Christmas party.  Since we are a designer-ish company, I thought these were fitting.  I remembered Tim Holtz (I just love that my Samsung galaxy note recommends Holtz as the next word after I Swype "Tim") talked about liking distress stain for quickly laying down color, so that's what I did.  The first part I cut was the holly so that I could get the Stickles berries drying.  I used mowed grass stainon white card stock and then stamped with black archival ink.  All the stamping was done with same archival by the way.  Then I got to cutting out 10.  I had stamped just the hat portion all aroud the sheet, so with the help of the magnetic platform it was a snap going back and forth through the vagabond.  Wash, rinse repeat, with the nose (spiced marmalade),  hat (used vintage photo and weathered wood - liked both), scarf (festive berries) and arms (well, gathered twigs of course)  Then, cut 10 tags from manila cardstock using the Tim Holtz sixxiz tag die and cut a bunch of grommets using same die and metal tape from the hardware store.  I stamped the entire image on the tag and then assembled, mostly using mounting tape.  The arms were glued on.  My only tip would be to keep an eye on all your bits, especially the noses.  If you craft like I do, you sometimes have a hard time finding little bits.  I kept a tin next to the vagabond while I was cutting.  Anyway, it,was fairly simple and easy enough to do quite a few

Creative chemistry 102

Okay so I'm really behind.  So I've decided to sit back, relax and enjoy the experience.  There is so much packed into these classes.  I am amazed at the number of people who kept up the pace.  If you're on the fence, don't be.  There's plenty to get out of these courses and nothing is lost by not taking them "live".  So check out timholtz.com and sign up.

Here's one of the techniques I've mastered so far.  Very quick and easy.  It's from day one.

Stashing the Stash

There's lots of buzz right now in the crafting world about all the new releases at CHA this week.  We drooled over the sneak peaks and now all off our favorite craft celebraties are back from the show and sharing their pics and videos.  Here's just a few:

Tim Holtz
Shelly Hickox
Paula Cheney
Richelle Christensen
Tammy Tutterow


Crafters love the process, not just the crafting.  That includes questing for new stash, sales, coupons, where to find the best on line selection with the lowest shipping. Added to that joy, is the sorting, organization and storing of said stash.

Last weekend I celebrated CHA Summer 2013. by using craft stuff, to create some craft stuff, to store new craft stuff.  HURRAY.   New seasonal intros usually means new TH movers and shapers, sixxlets, and there's some Memory Box Christmas dies that I have my eye on.

Step one:  Score a cheap and ugly frame from a flea market

Rip the paper off the back, pull out the tacks and remove the ugly print

Slather on Tim Holtz Crackle Paint

Then, walk Away - Seriously - For me that means find something else to do and come back in a few hours or I will mess it up. Same goes for Tim Holtz distress stickles and anything coated with Glossy Accents.  Just walk away

Okay, good girl.  Now come back and dry brush with Tim Holtz distress paint. Once that's dry - for this step, no worries,  you can use the heat tool - then use your fingers to smear some TH gathered twigs and black soot paint in the general vicinity of the corners.

Admire the messiness.  Now tape magnetic paper to the ugly print.  I buy the sheets meant for printers from Staples or whereever handy.  I tape it on first, then trim any excess.  I needed 2 pieces for this frame.  The join line won't end up showing.

The black side is the magnetic side, so this side is the top.  Wrap Tim Holtz tissue wrap over the magnet paper and tape to the back.

Flip it over, and ink the Tissue wrap  - the black shows through, but it looks perfectly fine.

Reassemble the frame and hang on the wall  Now it's all ready for your new Tim Holtz Sizzlets dies with stamps...

Christmas Tim Holtz Sizzlets Here

Halloween Tun Holtz Sizzlets Here

Here it is on the wall.  Next to it you can see something similar where I used sheet metal instead of magnet paper to store movers and shapers.  Underneath you can see my Distress Ink pad storage.  The one on the left is an old sewing machine drawer.  The rest are ancient wooden cheese boxes salvaged years ago.

If you are stopping by, leave me a comment and if you know of any great storage ideas, I'd be really greatful if you'd leave me a link.  I'd love to see it.

12 Lamps of 2013 - March

Yep, it’s a twofer.  Here’s my March lamp.  I wanted to use most of the inspiration and many of the elements of Tim’s card plus fill in the blanks with tattered florals.  Here’s how it worked out:

I don’t have the mini bunny, so I knew I would have to use the tattered floral mini instead.  Since I had more room to work with, I used it with the Baroque die.  I was surprised to find a piece of white coredinations in my stash – not kraft core, more vanilla, but definitely a good stand in.  Sanded and inked as prescribed.  I knew that I wanted to use the inked tinsel for the shade bottom, so I inked some ribbon and wrapped it randomly around a spare bit of card stock and attached it behind the floral.

I have the holiday paper that Tim used and after studying the sweet images for a while, I decided that I didn’t want to cover them up.  I cut each one out, rounded the corners, ran the edges around the nib of a silver sharpie and attached them to the shade with brads.  (I used mostly brads and hot glue for attaching – not sure if adhesives would melt when the light is on).

I don’t have the grass die, so that was a complete pass and as I mentioned I wanted to use the tinsel as the lower edge.  I inked another piece of ribbon and tied it around the baroque ornament.  It was still looking a bit naked so I cut a frame out of black chip board using the mini baroque and did a tarnished silver finish, by doing a multi level silver embossing powder, UTEE, silver, UTEE – keep going until it looks awesome then STOP.

For me, the real star of this show is how really brilliant distress paint looks on metal!  Amazing!! I used the recommended foliage bits as a much needed embellishment for my beribboned floral /baroque thingy.  Now I want to paint all of the brads on my tattered florals.

So, with the elements of the tag done, I started hot gluing on the florals.  I used a piece of green wired burlap to loosely wrap around the lamp base, then added more florals.   I will tell you honestly that I was  amazed that the ribbon actually stayed put where I wanted it, with just a little bit of tape holding it in place at the top  and bottom.  For the lamp shade,  I was  pleased to find some robin’s egg blue chalk board paper in my stash that worked out quite well.  It takes 2 pieces: each  8 ½” high, 9 ½ wide, overlapped by 1/2“ and secured with brads.  I use the proved IKEA lamp shade as a template to poke the holes for the shade internal bracket thingy.

Love my lamp.  Thanks Tim for the inspiration and education!!!

http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-march/

TATTERED FLORALS!!!!

Ah Tattered Florals.  That’s where it all started, isn’t it?  This was several years ago and I can’t remember how it started, something to do with wanting to make notebooks out of recycled paper.  Somehow I stumbled on TH’s web site.  I watched every video.  Rewound – took notes.  I let it stew for a little bit.  Then, one day soon thereafter, sitting in the living room watching TV, I surprised even myself by saying to my husband “I want a Sixxiz Die Cut machine with A Tim Holtz alterations steel rule tattered flower die for my birthday.”  “A wha??”  says he.  “Here let me show you” says I and I showed him the videos and my little notes:  Stickles rock candy, distress ink, blending tool, perfect pearls,  distress embossing powder.  I remember it all well.  Now, a few years and about a million escudos later, I have the craft room of my dreams.

So my first Tim Holtz treasure combined with my latest Tim Holtz treasure!  What fun.  I took my fabulouso new distress paints and smeared them on my craft sheet using varying amounts of water.  Then I dragged, blotted and generally sloshed around with various bits of paper.  I wanted to use recycling so it was old manila folder, some packing paper, tissue paper and the top layer ripped off of a piece of corrugated  cardboard.  If a piece was too saturated I would smash another piece one top to mop up the excess.  Then I ran it all through the Vagabond (yep, upgraded as soon as I could) using the tattered floral Bigz, decorative strip and movers & shapers.  That gets you a huge pile of various flower shapes and leaves to randomly assemble.  Tattered floral spring time bliss.

Check out Tim's challenge here  http://timholtz.com/tattered-floral-challenge/.  and while you're there, check out the videos.

12 Lamps of 2013

Hi there Tim.  What is your preferred form of verbing your name?  Because when  I saw this lamp at Ikea the first thing that ran through my head was that it was just crying to be Tim Holtz-ed(?).  Initially I was  going to Christmas tag it and having one at either end of my dining room side board.  But, as I mentioned before, with the move and all, things got a bit timey wimey and the Craft Cupboard Under The Stairs has just newly started to function again.

the shade that goes with the lamp is a flat strip of plastic with notches at the ends to hold it in a round shape.  It has holes in it to accomodate the bracket that fits on the lamp base.  I used the as a template to create the shade out of a recycled manila folder.  Rather than cutting the tabs, I just overlapped the straight edges and secured with brads.  The overall height of the lampshade is a bit longer than the one that comes with the lamp - a preferable length to me.

I picked this stamp because it seemed to lend itself to layering and fit the Valentine theme.  I used Kraft core and the postcard texture fade x 2.  I cut them in half and pieced together with tissue tape.  I followed Tim pretty closely, with very few exceptions: http://timholtz.com/12-tags-of-2013-february/.  You probably recognize the vintage lace decorate strip cut from metal tape.  The pointy finger is stamped on craft card cut with the ticket mover and shaper and the other ticket is stamped with “To my dearly beloved”.  I secured both of these with brads I covered the base of the lamp with flowers cut using Tattered Florals Bigz die, mover and shapers and decorative strip.

And Tim is right.  I had a blast with the distress markers and water brush .  I am not at all good with water colors but it seems easy to get nice results.

Viola

Ruling Matriarch with a smile that would light a room

Used:
TH tag and flourish dies
TH seasonal distress
TH craft resist
rock candy crackle, stickles, copper embossing powder, spare lace, ribbon flower.

Thanks Linda for GM
Thanks Tim for inspiration and fab products

I'm a bit creeped out

I have to admit, I’m a bit creeped out.  Probably because this is not where I thought I was going.  GM 20 this week is distress stickles.  My stock currently consists of rock candy and picket fence.  IMO distress stickles is perfectly suited for doing old fashioned post cards or scraps.  Gives the look of old glitter that’s flaked a bit over time.  Simon says stamp says show some bling, so I thought I could work both together into an old fashioned Halloween greeting.  In addition to the stickles and the bling I thought rosettes would add just the right touch.  It started glamorously enough….I cut a tag out of black card stock (TH die) and embossed a TH flourish in black.  Then I gave it a smear of silver dauber and scrubbed it off again.  The trouble started when I couldn’t find the glamour Victorian witch image that I was seeing in my head.  That’s when things started going in a different direction.  I had this old photo of someone’s progeny and started thinking about shopping some witches hats on them…..worked pretty well.  Suddenly, the fact that they were holding hands was no longer a good thing!  “If you don’t give us candy, we’re going to start chanting”. 

The rosettes (TH Mini Rosette die) were cut from a sparkly black coredination paper, layered with 2 of the Halloween TH tissue tapes and smeared with rock candy distress stickles.  Rock Candy also appears on the tag in a few spots, on the witch’s hats and along the edge of the laced.  The bling I picked up a Michaels.  It’s a really cool black/grayish iridescent color.   There’s some nasty looking feathers and the misshapen donut is picket fence distress crackle and UTEE.   If you’re here, you know what I mean by TH, but for the record, check out the awesomeness here

So, thanks for stopping by….I love your comments! 

Le Loup Garou (Or GM 17 & SSS)

Odd that the concierge would caution her against going out on just this particular night.  Odder still, was that a gentleman would toss his lovely homburg on the ground.  Still, she was a modern girl and in Paris for an adventure.  If she had only paid closer attention in French class she might have understood the concierge when he said “Le loup garou”.

This week’s Grungy Monday is all about Rock….Tim Holtz Rock Candy Distress crackle paint and Rock Candy Distress Stickles no less.  One of the best things about these challenges is the journey that I take from my original idea, to the end results.  Often miles apart.

I picked up this postcard at flea market.  I’m sure in its day (postmark is 2/10/1908) it was considered romantic.  However, no doubt influence by current pop culture, I find it interesingly creepy.  Full moon, dark sky, sinister house in the background….

I scanned it and shrunk it down to about ATC size.  With TH stamps, I stamped and embossed the clock and luggage sticker.  Both got a nice coat of crackle.  When the crackle was ready, I rubbed block soot DI into the cracks and wiped off the surface.  The frame holding the ATC has rock candy stickles smeared on it.  I scanned the map from inside cover of an old French text book (1948), printed in on cardstock and cut a tag using my TH die.  And of course, it’s stamped with a flourish and blinged and fluffed.

Fabulous that I actually finished a challenge before Sunday!  Maybe I’ll have time for another one this week.  Speaking of that Simon Says anything goes….so here goes

Simon Says “Show a Word” – Peace

Happy Independence Day USA.  I got my inspiration from…..Tim Holtz (So, how many times have you said/heard that one!)  Anyway, I really liked what he did on his blog this weekend.  So, here’s my timely tag for SSS Show word challenge.  I thought I might try adding some fireworks with Distress Stain like Deb Corder did here.  Awesome, right?  But, I think I want that to be the feature in the next 4^th tag.  Or the ruffle that Shelly Hickox did here, but I didn’t have the right color to make it work.

So, I did the burst same as Tim, Embossed some stars with sparkle blue and red distress.  The grunge paper letters are silver alcohol inked, then glammed with stickles.  The ruffle was made with layers of crepe paper.  Snip, glue, glue, pinch, fluff.  The trim was from a dollar spool,  that I colored with color wash.  It looks like a blue caterpillar.   But, I had a long struggle to make it (suffice to say stain everywhere) so I’ll look at it for a few days,  then replace it with something nicer.

Yesterday was beautiful, but it’s raining here right now.  Hope it doesn’t spoil anyone’s plans for the 4^th.  Great day for a movie!

Letters to My Love GM 12

LOOOOVE Tim’s tag for this!  Linda over at Studio L3 took us back to 2008 where Tim was showing us a resist technique used with decorative papers. 

The first fun step of any of these challenges is to brainstorm what I have on hand to create my piece.  The guest artists do a fabulous job of demonstrating that it’s meant to be inspiration not emulation.

My biggest product limitation is the paint daubers that I have.  I was pretty sure that it would have to be either black or red.  What I saw in my head was something made from my 7 Gypsies Lille stash.  I love this paper and thought it would be great.  BUT, another big product void was a large area stamp.  Got nothing’there.   Without that, I didn’t think I could do the paper justice.  {My 12 yo loves all phobia words and is on a mission to learn as many as possible….what do you call the fear of breaking out the good paper?}.  So, playing it safe, I used the stamp from last week’s challenge because that worked really well for masking and a piece of K&Company Life’s journey (old correspondence in sepia/cream).  I used the same paper for the tags, pocket, “ribbon” and tab. 

A lot of the red dauber came away but I liked the script showing through.  I used the same background stamp with barn door on the pocket, stamped over it in aged mahagony using a stamp from Tim’s mini classic collect.  It’s attached  with 7 Gypsies Lille tape.  I also used the mini classic collection on the little tag.  I stamped “Love letters” on another strip of paper and strung it through a brad from my stash.  The brad was an awful color so most of the paint was removed with steel wool and I colored it with Cranberry and Rust alcohol inks.  The tab has “To my Dearly beloved” stamped on it with Sepia Archival.  I think this stamp is Hampton Arts.  I used flourishes from the same set on the top of the mini-tag. 

The charms come from the clearance section at Joann’s, Michaels or AC Moore.  The pins used to attach come with the tags on my favorite clothes bought at Kohl’s.

Grungy Monday 09

Grungy Monday 9 – Shabby Chic

What a mess!  This is definitely Grungy and Shabby, but I have to say. I’m kind of fond of it.  It’s the process not the product. 

This is for Linda’s Grungy Monday challenge over at Studio L3.  She has a wonderful thing going on, and if you didn’t get here from there, you should definitely check it out.   This week she picked a technique demonstrated by Tim Holtz here.  I’m pretty new to all of this, so everything she’s picks I’m trying for the first time.  It’s a blast!.

I painted my cardstock with black dauber as per TH.  Then I cut a stamp out of fun foam using my brand new TH cage die.  Also got this idea from TH.  It’s a great two-fer – you can find all kinds of great tips like this on his website.  I used this new stamp and the TH flourish stamp to do the clear embossing.  I am very limited in daubers and didn’t really want to use any of the colors that I had so I used another green acrylic paint that I had with some snowcap and silver dauber.  This is where the trouble started…..I couldn’t get the paint to wipe off.  Probably the other brand acrylic isn’t suited and I don’t think the silver dauber is suited very well either.  Plus the foam I used for the cage stamp was way too thin to have the stamp turn our nicely.  I read over on All Things Tim that if you don’t have the thick fun foam, glue two layers together.  Definitely a good tip.  I'll have to do that next time.  So…I had to pretty much scrape the paint off the embossing and took some paper with it.  The flourish turned out okay but definitely shabby.  The cage, due to thin stamp, turned out badly, but when it popped in my head that it looked like someone had drawn it on a wall with charcoals, I decided I liked it anyway.  So, I pressed on.  Next, I tried the tarnished silver and enamel technique that Shelly Hickox demos on her website.  If you haven’t check this out, you’ll want to.  She’s a genius with the techniques.  She just made this amazing telescoping steam punk card!  Check it out! 

Anyway, the number plaque thing is supposed to look like white enamel.  Well, seems my perfect medium had all kinds of STUFF stuck to it and the pad had actually turned to this mushy mess.   I applied it before the numbers had dried and also managed to pick up some green color, probably from my craft sheet.  Bottom line, added more mess to the mess, but I still don’t hate it.  You can’t see it very well in the photo, but the wing turned out okay, it has a pretty green flourish on it.  It did however crack.  I still don’t hate it.  I added some bling , a sentiment from the computer inked with DI peeled paint and a kiss of silver dauber, somemore bling, a silver daubered mat, oh and some stickles too. 

Like I said – it’s the process.

Grungy Monday 08

Here’s my latest for the Grungy Monday challenge over at Studio L3 (aka “really takes the sting out of it being a Monday”).  This week it’s a water color technique taught by Tim Holtz here.  So, I got out a piece of white card stock and what seemed like the most suitable stamp for this technique from my collection.  You’ll recognize this as coming from Tim’s Spring Sprung set.  The only inks I have other than archival black and sepia are distress inks.  So, I pulled out victorian velvet, worn lipstick, milled lavender,aged mahogany, dusty concord and fired brick; as well as peeled paint and forest moss.  I figured I would use some combination thereof.  My mini misters were all filled with a home brewed perfect pearls mist.  Figured, what the heck, so I inked misted and stamped.  And, it come out too runny.  Now although I’m a rank rookie at all of this, I should have know better.  Because, before I knew of Studio L3 and ATT, I had watched all the videos at www.timholtz.com a good two, three times and it should have dawned on me to spritz a lot less then Tim did in his demo.  Undaunted, I re-inked with the other 3 non green inks that I didn’t use on the first attempt and stamped over the first image, but shifted to the left to stamp in the between spots.  Actually, I didn’t hate how that looked.  So now, I needed something to add to all the void on this white card and the butterfly from the same collection seemed like the logical, suitable choice.  BUT, I decided to go check out my new guides at ATT  (aka Big Bunch of Enablers J).  Minutes later I was flying out the door, coupons waving in the wind.  Not only had the peeps there informed with the what and where, but also the how with links to the coupons.  When I got home and surveyed my new loot, I couldn’t resist stamping my new airplane from the Tim Holtz Visual Artistry collection right above my “weeds”.  I added the sentiment from the same collection  It is as much about this new craft journey as it is about anything else.  So, newly inspired, I redid it all and created this remembrance.  Big thanks to Linda and Gloria and all of you out there whose blogs and posts help me to create this and  inspire me on this journey!

Grungy Monday 07

I loved this week’s challenge at L3.  The Tim Holtz technique was  simple, fool proof and turned out looking better than I imagined it could.  I made a lot of embellishments for this tag but used only a fraction of them.  I didn’t want to cover up all of the luscious TH DI.  The colors reminded me of Tuscany, so I used it to mount one of my favorite pictures from our trip.

Gungy Monday 6

Here’s my entry to GM 06.  Take a look at Linda’s site where she is picking a Tim Holtz technique of the week and gets us inspired with her own creation and some from guest artists.  I LOVE the color combination on her piece this week.  The TH technique is demonstrated here.

I started with white dabber and inked in…hhmm….I think every brown shade of DI that we own.  Added some more white dabber and more ink.  I wanted to try out flowers using all of our back ground stamps, so stuck them on here too.  Some old lace, tissue tape, this and that – all adorning a picture of our, not so little anymore, bunny taken about 10 1/2 years ago. 

Thanks Linda.  I can’t wait to see what Monday brings.