Artsy Challenge - Tim Holtz

This tag card is for one of our best friends who is taking early retirement this week. Lucky him! The inspiration for this definitely came from Tim Holtz 12 tags of Christmas this year and also his monthly posts along the way throughout the year, so thanks again Tim. Although not Christmasy I am entering this on a new challenge site I found today at Artsy, quite opportune as I only finished the tag yesterday and took the photo's. I tried the resist crackle glaze technique where you stamp over the top using Distress Ink and wipe away the excess with a water soaked cloth. I think this is THE most fantastic effect and I can see me doing this to death I love it so much! I used one of the stamps from Paperartsy again that came with the Craft Stamper subscription and this technique allowed me to loose the image of the man and keep a bit of the writing and the pen nib. I did the same with the script stamp for the background. AB FAB.

Apart from the crackle paint (fired brick), distress inks (walnut stain,scattered straw,spiced marmalade) acrylics (espresso,butterscotch) and alcohol inks (copper mixative,raisin) there is nothing else by Ranger! As always, and I am sure many of you are just the same, I don't have much money left over every month to spend, spend, spend, although I could easily get carried away given half the chance! So I had to adapt & create. No Heidi Swapp clock face or ghost pieces? I stamped a pocket watch stamp (luckily I had a freebie from a magazine) onto a piece of crackled effect paper and stamped the same image again using Staz On onto a piece of plastic that was an outer cover on some packaging. Overkill on the packaging front but I recycled it so I feel better. No metal cogs and pointers? I had some chipboard arrows (I nearly had to make from scratch then remembered these) that I coated with some espresso acrylic paint but did not like the colour and needed to brighten it a bit so rubbed some gold paste over the top. The cog wheel was hand cut and painted with butterscotch acrylic.

I don't know about you but I don't have an endless supply of wooden rulers, mores the pity, so I pasted a piece of paper with an image of a ruler (K & Co) onto some chipboard and inked the edges, added a metal word sentiment and attached with some brads.

I found some alphabet stamps on offer at my local craft shop (a bargain at £1.00 each) so I bought two different fonts one as capitols and one lowercase. I stamped the "Time On Your Hands" with a mixture of these onto card that had already had the tag treatment and cut them out. Then I covered them with Anita's 3D gloss (similar to Glossy Accents) to give them a glazed epoxy look. Again, I really must do this more often. By the way, please be sure to use a waterproof ink such as Archival or Staz On for the wording as the glaze will make other inks run! I was going to leave it there but felt it needed something in the lower corner so I distressed up a swirly metal paper clip with some copper and raisin alcohol ink and attached, I also added a bit to the cog like eyelet (We are Memory Keepers) to knock back the brightness.

Looking forward to some free time at Christmas to do some crafting. Hope that Christmas is all you wish it to be. Have an Arty one.