Tim's tags for August

Well the weather was atrocious last week and we ended up with flash flooding with our garage and garden underwater, in fact it was well above my ankles round the back and I had to go and carry Cimmie in from the top garden as he wouldn't come through the flooded lower ground. The weekend hasn't been much better with a wet BBQ yesterday and it's rained most of today too, What's happened to the August weather? But I'm not giving up on summer yet and decided to create two tags for Tim's August collection, one in a vintage style like his the other much brighter and reflecting summer at the seaside. Here we meet Georgia at two stages of her young life.

Tag 1
Georgia is 6 years old, she loves the outside especially being at the seaside . My tag is a Tim alternative with a bright summery feel to it but the steps followed are almost the same as the steps Tim teaches us this month.

The background colours are mermaid lagoon, twisted citron. broken china, frayed burlap and hickory smoke and I kept to Tim's steps but added my own version of the upper layers. The metal embellishments have been altered using distress paints and archival ink.

The starfish are the centre of the sand dollar die and cut in hessian to provide texture.

The seahorse was cut from a blue mopup piece of card, painted with rock candy crackle paint and when dry I added peacock feathers and broken china distress stains.

I wonder what else Georgia loves to do apart from be at the beach. Let's find out.

Tag 2
Here Georgia has grown up and at 17 is ready to explore the world, she wants to be an archaeologist and look for historic and beautiful relics. During her childhood she has become very interested in history around the world, has visited museums and archaeological digs and become passionate about saving the world's culture for all to see.

The background colours are barn door, broken china, frayed burlap, hickory smoke and walnut stain and again I have followed Tim's steps keeping to the truer vintage style he has adopted to use this month and adding my own collage.

The embellishing is also different, I've tried to find new ways (for me) to put the idea-ology trinkets together.

I enjoyed experimenting with the techniques this month, they suit my grungy style ......

... but I also loved playing with ways the techniques could be changed especially using different dies and colours.

I am linking, by the skin of my teeth,  to Tim's August collection and you can see his steps for making the tags on his BLOG.

I hope you've had a good weekend especially those in the UK with the extra day for August Bank Holiday. Have a good week ahead and consider as an artist/crafter are you an architect or a gardener. (I think I am a bit of both).

hugs Brenda xxx

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.” 

― George R.R. Martin

Tim's tag for July at CVC

What's on my desk?

Although Tim's tag was inspired by the US celebrations for the 4th July I originally wanted to keep to the red. white and blue theme and make a UK patriotic tag but it didn't work out. So I went a bit more vintage.

Using mini blueprints 4 I chose the vintage desk items and followed Tim's directions to colour up and make the tag stamping onto watercolour paper and using distress markers and a water brush to colour them in.

I applied micro glaze like Tim shows us, it does a brilliant job of sealing the distress inks and I love the distressed effects that can be achieved when you paint inks over it.

My design changes here with the addition of remnant rubs and ideaology.

I will link you to Tim's blog where you will be able to see his patriotic version and all the process steps that you can follow if you want to join in his monthly tag contributions.

Thanks for popping in today.

hugs Brenda

Products can be found at Country View Crafts - press the links to be transported there.

Tim Holtz stamps - Mini Blueprints 4 Set Tim Holtz Distress markers Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Cardstock Tim Holtz Water Brush - 1/2" Flat Tip Tim Holtz Distress - Micro Glaze Tim Holtz - Idea-ology remnant rub ons - life quotes Tim Holtz Idea-ology - Words Remnant rubs

InLinkz.com

Tim's tag for June

Under the wire or what??? Just managed to squeeze a bit of time last night to get this tag done while Ken was up the driving range and having a golf lesson - phew.

I've had to improvise quite a bit for this tag, I don't have the blending pad so I use distress inks colours directly onto the stencil and went from there. It's a different effect but I rather like it and it's not too dissimilar. The colours I used were victorian velvet, iced spruce, evergreen bough and the new hickory smoke.

I do have some of the coffee cup die-cuts that Trace sent me but I have already used them this week (see coffee lovers card here) so I decided to use my unused tarnished trophies die and create a tarnished patina effect using distressed products. (I think I feel a tutorial coming on, but I just didn't have time last night).

The pieces I gathered together to add to the tag.

I wanted to keep some of the details quite similar so I added hessian but used remnant rubs ....

.. the pin and coin in the ribbon is almost the same .....

...l but the trophy and ephemera is very different with a hand made price tag lol.

I am so pleased I managed to fit this in before the end of the month, I shall of course be linking to Tim's June tag link up.

Thanks again for stopping by, it's a very busy week here on Bumblebees and Butterflies so I shall see you again wednesday, thursday and friday.

take care.

hugs brenda xxx

Tim's May tag

Tim's tag this month is right up my street, vintage, ephemera and collage with hessian and some texture paste - a match made in heaven methinks.

Here's our little starlet, Nancy, who has travelled from England to the good ole US of A to find stardom. 

She arrived in New York but the small part she had in a short running play didn't lead to any further opportunities so she has decided to travel by train across to the west coast and to Los Angeles to see if she can get her name up in Hollywood lights. This is my good luck tag, hoping she will find the fame and fortune she is seeking.

I don't have Tim's adhesive backed canvas so I used watered down pva and adhered some to kraft card and then cut the tag using his tag and bookplates die. (I merged two photos together here).

The bookplate was cut at the same time as the tag from kraft card and sat calling me to use it, so I slathered over some rock candy crackle paint and when dry I dipped it in walnut stain distress stain, spritzed it with water and heat dried it. It now looks a bit like worn leather. As you can see I got the sewing machine out too. As I don't have the new thinlits mini flowers die I used my good old faithful tattered flower garland strip die.

Before I go I would like to share a couple of photos from our recent trip to California. One of our visits was to a wolf sanctuary out in the wilds of the desert. Here they have rescued a number of wolves over the years which are cared for and looked after and live happily away from man's harm. These were the wolves that were filmed and appeared in the movie and the series of Twilight. One particular one is very friendly and loves to be out of his pen, he is very happy to be rubbed and fussed and will lie down by your feet. Here are Ken and I enjoying some time with him with our friends Joni and Leo.

I also wanted to share a photo of my dear friend Terry and I. We were able to meet up again and go shopping together for crafty things and as we take our hubbies with us too we all had lunch together. It was such a special day with time to chat and catch up as well as spend some of those dollars I had taken with me lol.

Well I hope your day is going to be full of possibilities.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxxx

April Tim Tag

I took inspiration from several different sources to create my Tim tag for this month - Tim's April post of course but also a couple of things on Pinterest caught my eye using heritage photos (see my Pinterest board Here).

I began by cutting the front of an an old book cover away from the pages to use as my base .....

.... and gathered the resources and materials I needed to put this together.

I chose to use different stamps to Tim as I don't yet own the beautiful flowers but I also wanted to use one of the photobooth images and chose this one to go with the saloon stamp.

I am definitely in USA mode (we fly Thursday - yay not long to wait now) and picked out the word adventure to use on my project. Looking through my other thinlits I noticed the holiday word set has wonderland in it and that I could cut off the piece I wanted to make up my sentiment ..... and so it started to come to life. Having cut the kraft card to size and cutting the slits in it as Tim shows us, I turned my card over and adhered a piece of red card so that it showed through the cut out word.

I stamped and watercoloured my chosen image using distress markers and a water brush using the Wild West stamp set.

I distressed the edges of the book cover and inked the edges, you can see it has this wonderful linen cover over it that distressed really well .....

.... and I also stamped the stars from the same stamp set, coloured a star with denim alcohol ink and added some star brads and rusty elements.

Finally I attached some rusty wire to two clips and clipped them at the top to make this into a little hanging.

I know this is not at all like the master's inspirational tag, but I am pleased with the way it worked out and it does use his techniques and a similar layout.

I shall be linking this to Tim's April tag post.

Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of the weekend and have a great week ahead.

hugs Brenda xxx

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Tim tag for March 2015

I love the mixed media feel to Tim's tag this month and especially the gold contrasted with the gorgeous paints, but I found the effects really difficult to achieve. My embossing powder stuck to the background as well as the texture paste no matter how long I heat dried it - I think I shall try it again but leave the tag to dry overnight.. 

So, as is me, I played around and decided to dry the embossing paste and then use an embossing pen to add the ink and the gold powder. This gave me a completely different look but one that I really quite like.

You can also see I added some gold EP to the dragonfly wings and some remnant tubs to finish it off.

Thanks Tim for another fabulous opportunity to try something different but also a peek into your very inspiring creative mind.

Have a great weekend everyone.

hugs Brenda xxx