12 Tags! Day 4 and 5

Blustery Winds

Yes! My  Day 4 Snowman Tag and Day 5 Alcohol Ink Acetate Tag are completed and posted! Just Day 6 to go before I can be back working in order and back on track to complete Tim's 12 Tags for 2011.

December 4th it was snowing all day in Arizona where Tim lives and he was "Dreaming of a White Christmas" and it showed on his tag.  I love Tim's snowman tag and tried to follow it as close as possible. I love the look of the music paper with glossy accents showing through where the 25 is cut out from the snowman. The shiny, glossy white with blue tones and cracks is such a wonderful contrast with the aged paper. I can't imagine Christmas without images of snowmen and sounds of Christmas Carols filling the air.

I had learned the rock candy crackle and stains technique when Tim was a guest instructor in Jennifer McGuire's Inspiration Showcase class and I wrote a post about it here. I was so happy to see it used on this tag with the added step of using the white paint dabber first. During Inspiration Showcase, we did not paint the grunge before applying the rock candy. I must say I really love this look. I do not have the snowflake border die so I used the flourish die to cut out acetate. It looks to me like gusty swirls of wind.

Texture!

Acetate and Alcohol Inks

The Acetate Tag proved to be a challenge for me. I use one of the stamps from Tim's Stampers Anonymous Reflections CMS111. This one is a lighter font and while it works great for other techniques the ink dries a little fast in this lighter face and it is not quite bold enough for the full effect when stamping with the Archival Jet Black to remove the Alcohol Ink. I decided to stamp over the text with Tim's harlequin stamp from Creative Textures CMS 004 also from Stampers Anonymous. You can still see the texture of the writing where the alcohol ink was not removed by the second stamp and the added texture of the layers of alcohol ink and the distressed harlequin pattern. Tim backed his acetate tag with a pure white tag but I blended some light layers of distress ink in Evergreen Bough, Shabby Shutters, Antique Paper and Vintage Photo on mine. It gives it a wonderful watercolor effect. The tree is from Tim's Seasonal Grungeboard pack and thouroughly inked with Shabby Shutters then embossed with Peeled Paint Distress embossing powder. The star is from his elements shape grungeboard pack. The German Paper at the bottom is diecut from his new Victorian Lace die. Both are heat embossed with silver empossing powder. the tree trunk is just a little snip of twine ribbon.

Of course Tim Holtz has completed all Twelve Tags and it has been a fantastic 12 days. Every day for the last 12 days I have been following Tim's and Mario's adventures with The 12 Tags of Christmas and Behind The Scenes. Even with all kinds of internet problems they both worked diligently to make sure they shared with us the joys of inking, stamping, exploring, creating, sharing and giving and the posting of The 12 Tags of Christmas. They are amazing.