Tim Holtz August 2012 Tag

Good Evening Friends

It's only taken me from Saturday, but I've finally completed my first Tim Holtz tag!

Of course I didn't have most of the materials as listed by TH himself. I just had to exercise the little grey cells and improvise and, guess what, it was fun :) I didn't even have a tag ... I cut this one out a piece of leftover cream cardstock. I substituted a Cuttlebug embossing folder, Beautiful, for the one used by Tim.  Surprise, surprise, I did have the Adirondack dabber, Juniper, and enough of a selection of distress inks to be able to make a passable job of the inking.

The silhouette stamp is a digital one from Floppy Latte, Ribbon Flair, printed out onto smooth white cardstock and inked before adhering to the back of the frame. The frame, Papermania's white chipboard, has three coats of black embossing powder (Stampendous Midnight Black) and to get the 'carved' effect I stamped into the hot embossed surface before it set with a stamp with an all-over tiny flower pattern from Docrafts, V&A Quilt Posy Background.

Needless to say, I didn't have the right dies but I did have a Marianne Creatable Rose and the Sizzix Country Foliage dies and a really lovely leafy flourish die ... another one of the die-cuts in the package Chris Lee sent me - and it was perfect for the job. The rose die I have is the straight edged one, and of course, I really wanted scalloped edges so that my flowers looked more like the ones on Tim's tag. To get the effect I wanted, I trimmed the edge of the spirals with my fancy edged scissors - fiddly and time-consuming, but it did the job. I've used several snippets of coredinations card and after the flowers were sanded, rolled and shaped, the edges were inked with distress inks and then finished off with a little gold ink from a Papermania ink pad.

The words I chose for the tag are the last lines taken from a poem by F.VERR entitled Silhouette. The poet is a contemporary artist who uses 'colors, sounds, words and motion to adorn and inspire feeling on the blank canvas we perceive as space and time'.

 I won't quote the whole work but here's the last verse.

Where is she?
The one for me has not yet crossed my path
And though my mind's eye sees her
The sight is obstructed
She, only
Fills the silhouette

I thought the lines I've chosen worked well with the theme of the tag.

I don't know why I've resisted joining in with Tim's tag making ... well, I do really ... I didn't think I was up to it and, because I hadn't invested in all the TH materials, thought that I couldn't possibly make anything that looked like the TH original.

However, I did enjoy having a go, overcame the lack of materials, and am happy with the end result, so I won't be put off in the future ... in fact, if I can find the time, I might just have a go at his July tag too.

We had a dry spell today ... it didn't last long, but long enough for me to take the opportunity to trot round the garden collecting flowers and leaves for squishing. I also did a fair bit of dead-heading, especially on the EM's petunias which were looking horrible. He loves them, I loathe them ... it's the bright and gaudy colours that appeal to him. He puts them in planters every year and then neglects them terribly!

I'm thinking of having an early night and snuggling down with a good book. The current book, entitled The Ladies of Low Arvie, is about cows! I know, sounds an odd choice, but it's about an English couple who, wanting to live the farming dream, bought a farm in Galloway, Scotland, and decided to concentrate on rearing cows - the ladies of the title. So far, I'm thoroughly enjoying their story and finding it hard to put the book down.

So I'll bid you all goodnight and happy crafting,