Tim's Tag for December!!

Woo hoo!!  Once again Tim Holtz has hit his tag out of the park!

As ALWAYS I didn't have most of what he used.

     ...insert Distress Stain Sprays wailing and temper tantrum here....

And as ALWAYS I just MacGyvered my way to this:

I use smaller tags than Tim does so I didn't have the room for the second word.  No problemo!  I just added a strip of paper.  But ooooooops...I forgot to adhere it UNDER the frosty stuff!  Eh.  It's fine.  ;-)

I used some plastic packaging with a frosty look to it and as Tim did, I ran it through an embossing folder and it became even MORE frosty!  So love that look!!

I added a Mirrored Star, coated with Distress Paint in whatever that silver color is called.  Tarnished Silver?  Yeah, THAT.

The tree is die cut from Grunge Paper.  The die is actually supposed to knock all those swirls out, but it didn't like the Grunge Paper.  I thought it looked fabulous that way.  Pretty cool, eh??

There's a bit of glitter on the tree too.

And on my fingers.

And my clothes.

And the carpet.

And my computer keyboard.

And in my hair, on the mailbox, the TV remote, the neighbor's cat and the Eiffel Tower.

*&@#^%$  I hate glitter.




Merry Christmas, you crafty souls!!  =D


~Cynthia

Dec Daily in the Houuuuuuse!!!

Yeah, OK.  I really did make up my December Daily album way back in August.  I find that by getting the album set up that far in advance, I don't have to feel rushed putting it all together at the end of November...or even in December!!  ;-)

You can follow along with Ali Edwards and her December Daily project right here.

And, as always....and, as I am such a rebel...my December Daily is actually an Advent Daily.  I start mine on the first Sunday of Advent, versus the first of December.

This is an old 6x6 SEI album.  Love them.  I used papers and embellishments from We R Memory Keepers' North Pole collection.

The album cover is still plain simply because (a) I haven't decided yet what to put on it and (b) I usually wait til after Christmas to decorate it so that the embellishing doesn't get worn or fall off with all the use.

Here's the first page:

Love those sweet little houses!!


Here's another.  I stuck an embellishment on each page:

This is one of the pages for Christmas Day:

Here's another random page:

So that's done.  I've got a whole tub container full of 3x4 journaling cards, stickers and more embellishments.  Very excited and I can't wait to get started!  This album will take the place of the daily junque journal thing I have going.

Are you playing along with Dec Daily this year??  I would LOVE to see what you're doing!!


Stay crafty!

~Cynthia

Week In The Life

Ali Edwards ran her Week in the Life project this year from Oct 27 to Nov 2.  I was a bit of a rebel.  I prefer my weeks to start on Sunday, so I just moved it one day back.  :-)

I really wanted to use stuff I had on hand, so I grabbed an old, bought-on-clearance Smash Book and went to town.  It really was the perfect size--and I had plenty of pages too!  I loved it so much I bought another Smash Book for next year!!  (Yes, yes. I know.  It totally defeats the purpose of using stuff I have on hand.  SIGH.)

Here are a few pages from 2014's Week in the Life............

I loved the mix of pages in the Smash Book.  There were printed images and words on most pages. I tried to not cover them, but to highlight them with Distress Markers.

I also loved it when a particular page went perfectly with a photo, like this flower (above) from Wednesday.  (Excuse the wonky writing--I'm trying to learn some art journaling fonts.)

We had reallllllllly lovely weather that week.  I tried to hike as much as I could.

On Thursday (above), my Mom and I went to North Carolina's Blue Ridge Parkway.  More beautiful weather and gorgeous scenery!

On the last day, Tim Holtz posted his November Tag so I played along and got all inky!  While eating Halloween candy....of course.




I'll be doing two new (to me) projects in 2015.  One is Stephanie Ackerman's Documented Faith and in conjunction with that is Art to the Fifth's the Documented Life Project.

Both are free!  I'm already excited to see what craftiness (crafty-mess??) both of these projects will bring to 2015.  I've already done a few things to prep the journal/planner the classes use.  Check them out if you are looking to step out of your comfort zone!


And that's it for me today.  Thanks for dropping in!  Stay crafty, my friends!  :-)


~Cynthia

Tim's Tag Time!!

Gosh, has it been another whole month already??  It seems like I just posted the October tag two days ago!!  :-O

Sir Tim has created another gorgeous tag for this month and you can see that here.

AS USUAL I don't have all the fancy toys he has, so I went MacGyver on this tag big time.  I got super inky in the process!!  Love it!


Step One:  Distress Paint the heck out of a tag and then root around for an embossing folder that looks fallish:

Step Two:  Panic because you don't have the gold foil stuff Tim used.  Use gold embossing powder instead.  Watch as gold embossing powder goes everywhere.  Did I mention that gold embossing powder goes everywhere?  It does.

Step Three:  Spend way. too. much. dang. time trying to find some cardboard stuff.  Spend way. too. much. time fiddling with a leaf die cut.  Give up after three attempts and make do.  Attach to Distress Painted tag.  Go to distress edges of leaf cutout with ink.  Notice that there is now gold embossing powder on your beloved Gathered Twigs Distress Ink pad.

Step Four:  Eat some Halloween candy and feel better.

Step Five:  Flick brown ink on tag.  Realize you have no Distress Sprays.  Pout.

Step Six:  Smoosh Tarnished Brass Distress Stain on your craft sheet, spray liberally with water.  Make a huge mess.  Sop some up with a paint brush and flick it on the tag.  Feel pretty good about your MacGyver skills.

Step Seven:  Eat more Halloween candy.

Step Eight:  CAREFULLY press rub-on words onto a vial label. Remember that you believe rub-ons are evil.

Step Nine:  Eat more Halloween candy.

Step Ten:  Admire rubbed-on words.

Steps Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen:  Add Philosophy Tag thingy (it says LISTEN) with bakers twine and pop dots.  Ink up some seam binding for the tag topper.  Distress edges of tag and brush with gold-embossing-powder-covered-Gathered Twigs Distress Ink.

Step Fourteen:  Eat more Halloween candy.

Step Fifteen:  Admire finished MacGyver-ed November Tag.  Notice there is gold embossing powder on your computer screen.

Step Sixteen:  Eat more Halloween candy.  Repeat as needed.




Thanks so much for stopping in today!!

And Happy Fall, y'all!!  :-)



~Cynthia

It's October already???

Yep, it's October the first and you know what that means around here...Tim's TAG TIME!!!


And as usual, I had to go all MacGyver on this tag because I don't have any of the supplies Tim Holtz used.  Totally check out his tag here.

Here's my take:

 

I used Embossing Paste for the background, hit it with about a gallon of spray inks, then mopped it off.  The paper towel removed a lot of the ink from the paste so when I hit it with a bit of Distress Spritzer-ed Distress Marker, the speckles really showed up.

The stencil is actually a large tree.  When I first removed the stencil and saw the paste....um...it looked awful.  Kinda like broken glass shards or something.  But with the addition of the spray inks, I think you can see the branches if you really squint.  ;-)

I did make the mask for the leaf like Tim did with his spider, but it faded into the background too much.  So I just made a leaf from watercolor paper and a stamp, then pop-dotted it into the little recessed area.

The pumpkin, however, is wicked cool. Here's a closeup of it...

See all that texture?  I stamped the pumpkin on watercolor paper, colored it, then slapped Rock Candy Distress Crackle on it.

Then I may have been in a hurry and I may have overheated it to the point where the Crackle may have bubbled and blistered.

So.  Freakin.  Cool.

It's like those weird pumpkins you find with warts and bumps all over them.

I totally buy those for my jack-o-lantern each year.  No, really.  I do.

I added some ribbon stuff, that awesome skeleton skull and the fun letters.

So that's it for me!  Thanks so much for dropping on by!

Peace, spray ink, and bumpy pumpkins!

~Cynthia

Tim's Tag for September!!

It's the first of the month and you know what that means!!

Tim's Tag Time!!!!!!

Head over to Tim Holtz's blog for all the details and directions and secret recipes.  ;-)

Tim did this cool ghosting thing with alcohol inks on glossy cardstock.

Here's how my first attempt turned out:

See any ghosting?  No?  Me neither.  So I went to Plan B which was to use the kinda cool backgrounds I ended up with and SMOOSH the Alcohol Ink Blending Solution through the stencil onto the tag.

BINGO.

Worked so nicely that way!

Check it:

 

Oooooooo.  Ghostly!

Then I stamped this image on the tag:

One of my faves and I was so excited to use it!

See that headdress thingy going on?  I smooshed more Alcohol Inks on another piece of glossy cardstock then die cut feathers from that.  And then I rubbed on some Remnant Rubs to the ghostly tag and glued and pop-dotted the feathers on too.

Which gave me THIS:

Whoah!  Nice, eh?

I mighta sorta went and gone a little crazy on this one.  Since I forgot to stamp script on my feathers like Tim did on his butterflies, I just die cut MORE feathers, stamped script and added them!  WOO HOOO!!!!!!!!

It's kinda funky, but I had fun and got all inky and so there ya have it!

Thanks so much for checking this one out!

Peace, love and Alcohol Ink feathers!!

~Cynthia

Tim's Tag Time!

Yep, it's August first already--time for another installment of Tim's Tags!!

I had So. Much. Fun. making this month's tag.  Check out Tim's version here for all the details and instructions.

Here's mine:

 

I've got Tissue Tape, stamps, Archival Ink, Vial Label, stencil, stencil paste, Distress Inks, Remnant Rubs, Distress Embossing Powder and Embossing Ink on this bad boy.  Whatever I had...I threw at this tag!

So cool.

My deepest thanks, as always, to Tim Holtz for being the creative mind behind the tags.

And thanks so much to you for stopping by!  Have a crafty day!!  =D

~Cynthia