July Tag - Inspired by Tim

Shimmer and Shine from Rock Candy Distress Paint

When Tim Holtz posted his July tag this month I was mesmerized. I loved the tag and loved his new technique that I had never seen before. This month Tim used a brayer to apply Distress Stains and the effect is amazing. Since seeing his tag, I've been playing around with different color stains on a white background and yellow and having a blast. Tim also used Rock Candy Distress Paint with stains. This is one of my favorite techniques and even though Tim has shown before and I can't get enough. If you want to see Tim's July tag and read his wonderful tutorial with step by step pictures click here.

Distress Stains applied with brayer.

I was reading and scrolling through Tim's tutorial, looking at all his amazing pictures as I usually do when I came to the end and saw he had posted the winners from June. I could not believe it when I saw my name. Mario even emailed me a new badge for my blog! When I told my daughter I won, she asked me what did I win. I told her I didn't know but it was one of Tim's products so it would be wonderful. If you haven't guessed by now I am a big Tim Holtz fan. My prize came today and I was right. Mario sent me Tim's Mini Blueprints 2 CMS 146. This set has 12 mini stamps including one of our Flag, The Statue of Liberty, USA and a Star. Perfect for the red white and blue tag I was trying to create for the July challenge. Needless to say once I started to work with my new stamps and following Tim's techniques, the tag took on a life of its own.

As usual I didn't have everything that Tim used, so some of the things I did a little differently. I stamped the images (instead of die-cutting an image) on Grunge paper with Archival Jet Black Ink and after the Rock Candy Distress Paint had dried applied the Distress Stain with a brush to the flag because of the smaller details in the stamp. I applied the stains directly to the other images with the dauber. I trimmed out the images with my tonic scissors. I stamped the flag and statue in black on the background so I wouldn't lose the blueprint lines. Then glued the cut out images on top using Glossy Accents.  The white stripes in the Flag and the highlights on The Statue of Liberty were added with Picket Fence Distress Marker. I also used some paper from Tim's Seasonal Paper Stash and Pewter Distress Crackle Paint on the Grungeboard stars and the Idea-ology star.

I had so much fun working on my tag. I hope you check out Tim's tag and participate in the challenge for July.

OWH Sketch #177

Sketch # 177 from OWH

Operation Write Home has a new sketch challenge each Sunday. I really like this one and wanted to see what I could do with it. The challenge for me isn't following the sketch, it is deciding what to put in that little white square. I wanted to make a love card so I started with a big heart. This is a stamp I've had quite a while. It is from Hero Arts. I love the stitched look. I stamped it 3 times shifting and rotating it a little to give it a bolder look. I wanted to stamp my greeting in the center but didn't have a sentiment that fit. The "I love you" sentiment from my Hero Arts stamp set Year Round Sentiments is on one line. I knew if I cut it apart it would fit but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Especially since the "I" would be so small.  So I inked each word separately and I used my Fiskars stamp press to help me line it up while I inked and stamped each word one at a time.

If you want to check out Sketch #177 and take the challenge, or just see what the other cardmakers created click here! They also have a sponsor this week, so if you do join in on the fun, you just migh win something. Check it out!

Thanks for stopping by.

Tim's 12 tags of 2013 - June...

I love my Distress Markers and I love seeing what people are doing with them. Tim Holtz has a series he does that is called 12 tags of 2013. As usual, he has an excellent post this month. It is filled with great techniques for using his distress markers. He even uses distress inks and stains. Tim always has loads of details and photos to make recreating his techniques amazingly simple. It you'd like to see him work his magic click here.

 After seeing Tim's post I decided it's time I got busy myself. I had a wonderful time lost in the world of creating. Between checking the directions on Tim's blog, trying the techniques and starting over a few times using different stamps, I lost track of time.

I followed along but used different colors and stamps. The Butterfly stamp I used is available in the CMS146 Mini Blueprints 2 set. The quote is from Tim's CMS mini classics 062 and the quotes on the background of my tag are from various Tim Holtz stamp sets. All of his stamps are from Stampers Anonymous.

I did dress my finished tag up a little. I added some Idea-logy pieces and used some Distress Paints on the ARTFUL token and the spinner, the chain tassel is attached with a brad and the ribbon is altered with distress paints and stains. I've seen these techniques on Tim's blog before and enjoyed trying them out. The hardest thing was waiting for the paint to dry on the metal.

Little Yellow Bicycle Poppy

To Thank our Heros - my first Any Hero Cards

I met with some of my friends at my local Archiver's to scrap. They scrapped, I worked on cards for OWH. I'm overdue for sending in cards. I was working with my scrap papers and decided I wanted to get something new to work with. When I saw the "Poppy" line from Little Yellow Bicycle I fell in Love. The colors are bright, cheerful and summery. The flowers, butterflies and embellishments are adorable. I started with 2 pieces of double sided paper, a pack of journaling cards and a sheet of washi tape. I also picked up some of Ranger's Adirondack Red Pepper embossing powder. The color is perfect for this paper line.

I had 5 stamp sets with me. Tim Holtz's Way With Words from Stampers Anonymous, my OWH Hero Arts sets (CL583 Right At Home,  CL582 Year Round Sentiments and CL584 All The Time) and WTG Godspeed by My Favorite Things.

The artwork on the paper inspired most of my cards. It is double sided, so I was able to get quite a few cards with different looks. I used a few punches, a few pieces of card stock and orange vellum. The popped up Poppies were cut from the pattern paper.

This final card was inspired by a card Lin at Sending Hugs made using Washi tape to create the background. You can see her card here. This is the reason I bought the package of LYB Poppy washi tape. I wanted to try this technique out. The flower is from the pack of journal cards. The orange is varnished so I stamped the clock face with StaysOn. Since the flower is irregular in shape I used a watercolor to fill in the outside circle on the clock, then went over it with Versamark and clear embossing powder to even out the inner circle.The hear in the center is embossed with the Red Pepper embossing powder from Range. I made these cards and the ones from Jane E's sketch and still have a little pattern paper left over.

OWH-Thinking of Jane

Using OWH Sketch 175 inspired by Jane E

Jane E's sketch 175

Recently OWH had a post to honor Jane E who was recently deceased. She sounds like a wonderful, generous woman who enjoyed making cards for Operation Write Home to send to our troops. I wanted to create a card using her sketch. I love her clean and simple design and I followed it closely. Here is the link to her sketch and here is a link about her that showcases more of her beautiful cards.  I was very touched by their post honoring Jane. It was very inspiring to read about Jane and her dedication.

The paper I used is by Little Yellow Bicycle and the sentiment is by Hero Arts from a OWH stamp set.

In case you aren't familiar with them,  Operation Write Home is a great non-profit organization who send handmade cards to our troops overseas.

Celebrating Tim's Birthday with a Studio L3 challenge!

Happy Birthday to Tim from Ruby

Happy Birthday to Tim from Jenn

What better way to start off the New Year than with a challenge. Linda Ledbetter has one that I couldn't resist. Create a birthday card for Tim Holtz! The deadline for this challenge is Jan 7th at 11:59pm Mountain Time. You can read about the challenge at her blog Studio L3. I was so excited about this challenge I had to tell my friend Jenn. She created a card too! 

Jenn and I both are Tim Holtz fans. He is so creative and enjoys sharing his love of Distress. You can find a virtual vault of Tim's techniques in "A Compendium of Curiosities" Volumes I and II or visit his blog at TimHoltz.com

More Cards for OWH

On my last post I had a link to the  Operation Write Home blog hop this week. You can still join it here. You can post comments through July 7th and still be entered into the drawings. It's been a while since I sent any cards to OWH and the blog hop inspired me to get busy. Here are 2 more cards I designed to send into Operation Write home to send to our troops.

OWH Midweek Throw Down

The first card I made is for the OWH Midweek Throw Down. The theme is Anniversary cards. After searching through all my stamps I found I did not have ANY Anniversary sentiments so I printed a sentiment on velum using a pretty script. By setting my word document to 4 columns and using some column breaks, I worked it out where I could print the sentiment 6 times on one sheet of vellum with the spacing I needed. Once cut into strips, I trimmed the left side with Fiskars Threading Water border punch and cut a dove tail in the right hand side.

The card base is Bazzill Bling cardstock in one of their lovely pinks. I inked up one side of a Tim Holtz texture fade folder with Close To My Heart White Daisy Ink pad. I really like the contrast of the dull white ink on this shimmery paper. The textured Bazzill weave really shows up. I heat set the ink with my heat tool to help it dry.

The rose stamp is one of my favorite flower stamps. It is a Anna Griffin stamp from the Roses Collection by All Night Media. I colored it with Berol Prisma Color pencils. I punched a scallop oval with a McGill punch and colored with Spun Sugar Distress Stain and placed it behind the pink rose to frame it and separate it from the background.

Stars and Stamps Sketch #01

I made the second card using a OWH Stars and Stamps Sketch and another one of the stamp sets Hero Arts designed for OWH. This one is called "All The Time" CL584.  This set has 2 different clock faces, two watch hands and 7 sentiments. I used Distress Inks to stamp the clocks in the background. Some are seasonal colors: Squeezed Lemons, Picked Raspberries and Salty Ocean. I also used Dried Marigold. These colors really go well with the bright pattern paper which is from my paper scraps. I used a water brush and Tumbled Glass Distress Marker to add a little blue wash to the big clock face. The sentiment is embossed with Zing White embossing powder on red cardstock. I only made 2 of these cards because that is all of this pattern paper I have. I think I may go through my scraps and look and see if I have any other papers in these colors. I really like the bright cheerful look. OWH accepts up to 30 multiples of each design. You can find out more about the 3 sets and how they help OWH here. 

Since I used Hero Arts stamps on this one I will also upload this one to the Hero Arts Flickr group as well.