Tim Holtz Inspired Tag

Have any of you been to Tim Holtz's new blog? For those of you who don't know Tim (there might be a few of you out there), he is a Designer and Senior Educator for Ranger Industries, maker of all the fun, exciting distress inks, alcohol inks and other totally cool innovative products out there for us insatiable paper crafters! I don't personally know Tim (although I CAN say I shared the same air space with him at last spring's CHA convention in Chicago), but his new blog certainly inspired me this week design and create my own holiday tag! Actually, for the past 12 days, Tim has been featuring these uber cool, AMAZING holiday tags and then GIVING THEM AWAY, along with all the products he used to make them. Unfortunately, I didn't win anything, but he inspired me none-the-less, and that's the wonderful thing about this blogging business, isn't it? He doesn't know me from Adam (or should I say Eve?), but his work inspired me to try my hand at something I've never done before. Thanks Tim!

With Tim's introduction out of the way, now I can show you my tag! I am tickled with how it turned out. I made it for the gentleman who I do freelance media buying for. I am giving him a bottle of wine and I just wanted to be able to say "thanks" to him for being so good to me the past 4 years. He is having a holiday brunch this morning for his few employees (I think there are only 4 people that work out of the office, and a few people that freelance for him outside the office) and our biggest client.

Here's my tag and it's "evolution"....

It started off bright blue! The first thing I did was rub Ranger Distress ink in Frayed Burlap all over the tag to tone down the color. Then I daubered on a little bit of Adirondack Acrylic Paint in Lettuce over the blue (not very much, you really wouldn't know it was there). The final step in altering the blue tag was to paint Distress Crackle Paint (in Old Paper) over the entire tag. I used my heat gun to speed the drying/crackling process because I'm really impatient!!! This stuff is SO COOL!!!! The tiny bottle has a built in brush, and requires only one coat of the paint to crackle. The thicker you paint it on, the bigger the cracks and vise versa. I can see many bottles of this amazing product in my future!!!
My next step was stamp my SU Baroque Swirl over the crackled paint. After it had dried, I rubbed more Distress Ink in Frayed Burlap over the whole thing to give it more depth. As I did that, some of the paint chips came off to reveal the blue tag underneath!!! It looks SO cool!

Next came time to embellish the tag. I knew I wanted to use my new Inkadinkado bird stamps on the tag, so I stamped this uber beautiful bird onto a piece of distressed Basic Grey paper in a bluish color using black Versafine ink. The blue paper underneath shows through the flowers on the bird! I love this stamp!!! I am SO sorry if I am enabling you, but I've got to say, this new bird set inspires me SO MUCH!!! When I cut out the bird, I left a slight border of the paper around the bird to bring out more of the bluish color of the paper. I mounted him on top of the swirls to appear as if he's flying (ok, that's a stretch, but you get my drift, I'm sure!).

The letters forming Thank U are American Craft Thickers. I rubbed each letter in SU Bashful Blue ink and allowed to dry. Then I rubbed Distress Ink in Frayed Burlap over each letter to deepen the blue color. The final details includ outlining the bird with my Stardust Gel pen, adding pearl stickers all over the tag, and tying two ribbons onto the tag. In order to cover the back of the tag which had taken on a little bit of paint (and thus looked ugly), I cut a piece of Cosmo Cricket designer paper the same size as the tag and sewed them together. So now, the back of the tag looks as nice as the front of the tag!

I have to be honest and tell you that I don't want to give this tag to my boss anymore!!! I want to keep it for myself! Me bad. But IRL, it looks so cool! I am so glad I gave it a try! Collage type work is VERY difficult for me, which is why I shy away from it, but this was so much fun I think I'll do it again. Thanks so much for your amazing inspiration Tim!