Autumn Tags - Tim Holtz Style

I have really been in the Autumn/Fall mood lately. I'm really loving the change in weather and the trees are beautiful. I wanted to take part in the All Things Tim yahoo group challenge for the month of September, The theme is Fall and it's right up my alley.

I am entering the second tag into the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog - The theme this week is Say it with Stamps... On the "fall" green background tag, I said it with Tim Holtz stamps haha!!!

I actually ended up making two tags because I wanted to use my new Sizzix acorn stamp and cut die by Tim Holtz and I had two ways I wanted to use it. 

I used embossing ink and the acorn stamp first. I wanted to give the acorn some nice shimmer so u used this Stampendous glitter embossing powder. 

I then used the dies to cut out the acorn.

Once it was cut out I colored it with distress markers and the water brush.

You can kind of see the shimmer of the embossing powder in the photo below. I love how distress markers make it look like water colors.

I added some distress stain onto my craft sheet and ran my tag through it a few times for my background.

I wanted to emboss my background with an embossing folder so I used this Sizzix leaves folder and ran it through a few times.

I then went over the embossed leaves with Gathered Twigs Distress ink.

Once that was done I created the letters using dark brown cardstock and Tim's "wanted" letter strip.

I also cut out the bird using the same color cardstock and Tim's movers and shapers.

I added some brown ribbon and a word charm.

I love the outcome of this one, it's so subtle but pretty.

For the next tag, I wanted to use a green background so I used several different green distress stains this time. They were a bit bright so I also added a touch of browns and oranges. 

I then used Adirondak ink to stamp my acorn into the background for placement purposes.

I then used Tim's new stencils and some Archival inks to create my background. I used several Crafters Workshop Stencils as well.

I grunged up the edges using my distress tool and went around it with distress ink. I am really loving how the background came out. 

Next, I got to work on my acorn. This time I wanted to do a bit more paper piecing with it so I stamped it in archival black and then colored it with distress markers.

I then used my cutting pieces to cut the acorn up.

These are the pieces I ended up with.

I wanted to use some leaves and the hanging sign so I used Tim's dies and cut the sign out of cardstock and the leaves out of muslin.

For the leaves, I used distress paint in several colors to color them

I love the way the muslin curls up when its wet with the paint. It gives the leaves a real-ish look.

I also used some cardboard swirl cut outs and colored those with different colors of brown distress stains and then went over them again with Tarnished Brass distress stain to give them a shimmer.

I then colored some more muslin with distress stains for my ribbon topper

Putting this tag all together was fun, I just love how it came out. It's one of my favorites. The acorn topper was put on with diminsionals so that it stood up above the rest of the acorn.

I stamped the word fall using Tim's 

Worn Text stamp set.

I added some small acorns to the bottom and some embellishments. 

You can kind of see in the photo below how the top of the acorn is dimensional.  

Thanks for coming by, I hope you liked my tutorial on these tags. That acorn die and stamp set are awesome. I can't wait to get my hands on some more of those sets from Tim Holtz!!

CHEERS!!!