Halloween Project With Tim Holtz's Metallic Distress Stain

It has been way too long since I've been able to post and also work in my craft room. I'm having craft withdraws. I've actually been trying to get into my craft room since last week and FINALLY got in there today to do some much needed crafting and catching up on things. 
I am in several swaps and most are Halloween themed and since I just love Halloween I was really excited to do this. 
The first swap I'm in is the Rolodex and I decided to go a little more grungy this time. Brights have been my go-to lately and I thought I would go dark and grungy for this one. 
I just bought Tim Holtz new Metallic Distress stains in each color and I really wanted to use them so I decided to go with Tarnished Brass for the background on these and boy am I glad I did, this stuff is "to die for", I just love it!!! It's metallic shimmery goodness in a jar!
This is a picture of my background after I used the stain.

  It might be hard to see in the picture but it's beautiful. Once that was done I used a piece of cardstock and made a circle to use as a mask for the moon. I used Tim's Distress Inks in the colors Gathered Twigs, Aged Mahogany and Black soot around the circle so that the moon would just pop. 

I then used the spider web in the Trick Or Treat Tim Holtz stamp set and stamped on top of all of that with the Adorondak black stamp pad. 

Once that was done and pretty dry I used two stamps, the spider is from Tim's new set called Mini Halloween and the black bird is from Memory Box, I embossed those with black embossing powder. Then I added one small red gem to the spider to make her a black widow.

Here is a pic of that:

I love how the moon just pops off the page and the entire card is full of shimmery goodness from the metallic stain.

Once that was finished I took some plain colored cardstock and added the spider web tissue tape to it and colored over the tape with Adirondak paint dabbers in gold and espresso to give it more of a grungy feel. I then stamped the Happy Halloween from Tim's Mini Halloween stamp set and cut it down to make a banner ribbon, the banner was then stapled onto the top.

 I added some cotton ball for a cloud and wallah!! 

Happy Halloween!!!

Patchwork Pandemonium

I recently blogged about the class that I took with Tim Holtz and showed you a picture of my patchwork piece from the class. However, my piece was unfinished, I had layed out all the pieces on it but nothing was attached yet. All the background grunge board was done I just needed to attach the findings and do all the finishing touches. I took today and used it to do all of this and worked on finishing it, I wanted to share my finished piece with you. I added the stitching, and I used my raffle ticket from the class inside the glass vial. I also put the name of the workshop on the large red square, along with 2012. This was so much fun to work on and finish. Now to find the perfect spot in my house for it. Plus, I will be hanging it from my antique hanger!!! YAY!!

Tim Holtz Classes At the Queen's Ink

I was lucky enough to be able to take some two of Tim's classes yesterday at The Queen's Ink in Maryland. I have to say, that I was in awe to actually get to meet Tim and spend the day learning from him. What a special treat!!
The first class was called Heart and Soul and it was great, we took this paper mache' heart and box and made them amazing, so many fun and wonderful techniques. Here is a picture of my finished product....

I love how grungy it came out and how it looks like metal and the stitches are super easy too!! Who knew??

I also was lucky enough to take Tim's Patchwork Pandemonium class as well. Oh my word, it's SO worth it, if you ever have a chance to take this class, DO IT!! There are so many techniques and ideas and it's just a fun fun class. It's a long class, but who doesn't love sitting in a room with Tim and just listening to him talk?? I enjoyed it immensely. Here is a picture of my finished piece. I still have to adhere some of this but this is what it will look like finished.

Of course the classes were full of  give-a-ways and Tim surprises. Tim is so generous, he gave us a pack of Grunge Blocks for our project and some Alpha Parts newsprint style. The biggest thing though was Tim actually brought us all our very own antique hanger for our patchwork pieces. We all felt like we were sitting on the Oprah 12 favorites show, it was amazing!! Thank you Tim!!

Last but not least, my AllThingsTim yahoo group made rolodex cards for Tim to enjoy and I gave the set and base to Tim after class. He really loved it and was so happy to have something from the group. 

 It was a super fun day and I really wish I could have taken the classes today as well but alas I could not. This was my very first classes with Tim and I loved it!! I had a blast and will not forget this wonderful experience. What a treat it was to be able to take classes with Tim and meet him. 

 

Christmas!! Really??!!

Ok, so seriously, I am actually in a swap on AllThingsTim yahoo group and it's a Christmas patchwork pandemonium type of swap. I'm actually really excited about this swap and it's always good to get these themes done really early so that we can have these items back before Christmas. At any rate, my piece was supposed to be 3x4 in size and the theme was Christmas of course. Since it's the Tim Holtz group, I had to go a little grungy! Right!? I actually went through some of my tags from last years 12 Tags of Christmas and found my favorite elements from all twelve and sort of comprised them into one for this piece. 
I used distress inks in the seasonal Christmas colors and my white picket fence paint dauber for the background. I did use a Stampin' Up flourish stamp for some of this part because I really love the large flourishes that it had. I also spritzed it with silver perfect pearls. Here is a close up picture of my background.

After that I used Claudine Hellmuth's sticky back canvas and adhered it to grunge paper and cut out the reindeer with Tim's Reindeer Flight Die,  inked the edges with "vintage photo" distress ink. I used one of Tim's stamps to stamp the music sheet onto it and spritzed it with silver perfect pearls.

Once that was done I used brown packing paper (the kind that comes in a roll) and cut out a tag with Tim's Ticket Strip Die and stamped onto it with the Christmas stamp using red and green distress ink. I used glossy accents to go over the "25" and added a little red smooch for the berries. Distressed the edges a bit and went over them with Vintage Photo distress ink as well. 

I cut out the greenery with Tim's Festive Greenery and grunge paper (love that stuff).... and sanded it a bit to give it a weathered look. I used Tim's tissue wrap to make the flower, just like Tim does in the tag on day 12. I just made a smaller version. I inked up the edges with Smooch red and spritzed with perfect pearls. I added the berries, gems and also the pearls last. Hope you like it and I hope all the swappers love it too. Now to make 26 more of them!!! haha!!! Again,

 my picture taking skills are terrible so the cards looks crooked but I promise it's totally straight. lol

I am entering this in this weeks Simon Says Stamp & Show

Challenge - the theme is "NO RULES" YAY!!

 

Steampunk Journal Page

Finished this page today for a challenge on one of my Yahoo groups. This one gave me some fits and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to finish it but I sat in my craft room today until it was done. I love steampunk so I'm surprised that it was so tough for me. 
I am really loving the bright colors so this time instead of grunge I went with brights. Maybe that's why it was so tough. 
First thing I did with this page was used some wall spackle from Home Depot and a template to create the dimension on the left hand side of the page. That needs to dry for quite some time and at the time I had no idea what I was going to do with the page, I just wanted to try the spackle. haha! So it's been sitting around for quite some time. When I got the journal challenge and saw that it was Steampunk, I knew that I wanted to use this page for it. The page was completely white so I sprayed it with a combo of Dyan Reaveley sprays and the Tim Holtz color wash sprays. It made for some bright goodness! I used Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Black Soot to go over the spackle and make it stand out much better.
After that I worked on stamping the background a little with misc stamps and  also used black paint and a gear stencil. 
Everything else just kind of came here and there for the page, I wrote the words out on cardstock and cut them out all crooked and made "tickets" out of the words on the left side.
There is a mixture of Tim Holtz Die cute and Wendy Vecchi stamps for the page to come together. 
 

 

A Rolodex File For Tim

So we all know already that I am going to a class taught by Tim Holtz himself next week and I have planned on taking a set of Rolodex cards from the yahoo group AllThingsTim
So, I had this crazy idea to create Tim a really cool base so he can display his Rolodex cards. My original idea was to go out to my favorite thrift stores and yard sales to find him an antique base. Well, everyone knows when your looking for something you can never find it, right??!! So since I was running out of time I went ahead and bought this plastic base from a thrift store and decided to alter it and make it all "Tim'd" up. (that's my new word) 
I hope he likes it....
I'm also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp and Show     Challenge this week and SSS is giving away a 50.00 voucher to the winner! yay! There are so many of my favorite techniques that I used for this one but to mention one, I used the stamping on grungeboard and using it to cut the die letters technique. I love this idea and I just love using it all the time with Tim die cuts and grungeboard. 

August Rolodex Swap

This month I am going to a Tim Holtz class at the Queen's Ink Store in Maryland and I am SO excited. I can't believe that I will actually get to meet Mr. Holtz himself. YAY!
Since I get to meet Tim I made this months Rolodex swap in the theme of "Gears" and I am giving Tim one of each of the cards that the guys and gals submit in the swap. (assuming they want one to go to him) 
I am really happy that I can actually provide him some of the Rolodex cards that we have enjoyed swapping in the AllThingsTim yahoo group. So without further delay here is my submission for August's theme and an extra for Tim. :)

This is the back of the rolodex card. The little card is in a plastic sleeve so you can actually take it out and see the front. The front has a picture of the Steampunk tag that I made for a swap earlier this year that Tim got one of. :)