In the craft room 26 Oct 2013

#Tim Holtz October Tag time

With so much happening this month we have only just managed to squeeze in the October tag session from Tim Holtz tags of 2013

I do enjoy having a go at the tags as it gives us a chance to play with techniques rather than just make cards. It also gives us a chance to think outside the box a bit as we never have all the materials Tim uses so we have to find alternatives which can be a bit of a challenge at times.

We were a few things short this time, mainly the mini movers die for the Halloween shapes,  distress paint and glitter, so nothing major. The Halloween shapes were not a problem we just made our own, and I have plenty of different glitters, just not the distress glitters (yet). The main issue was the distress paint for the background, not a problem, Jenna and I played with a couple of options which we then put to the class to choose which one they wanted to try.

Jenna tried using some some ordinary acrylic paint on a craft mat and spritzing before swooshing her tag through. Because of her colour choice though, when mixed the paint tended to turn brown, but after a couple of attempts shegot the hang of it and got a lovely bright background.as you can see.

I found an Adirondack pearl paint dabber in my stash so dabbed a generous amount onto my craft mat along with two/three bright colours of distress stains, spritzed, swooshed and  dabbed my tag in the paint and then spritzed and dried my tag. I gave a lot more subtle background as the pearlescent paint diffused the bright colours of the stains but I rather liked the effect especially when over stamped with the black archival. The stamps for the backgrounds that I had in my stash which  were suitable for this theme were mainly from Indgoblu except the cat stamp which is from Katzelkraft in France (very good postal rates)

The rest of the group also decided to use the same method for the background (I think they thought it would be less messy and have more chance of being successful) and as you can see they all managed it really well and were really pleased with their finished tags from left to right we have Jackie’s, Diane’s, Margery’s and last but not least in any way is Lisa’s

I am always amazed at how different each one turns out even though they are given the same elements

As a reward for all their hard work this week I had made them ginger and cinnamon cupcakes, to go with their afternoon cuppa, which I have to say disappeared rather quickly.

The recipe I used  can be found on www.bakingmad.com. I only tweaked it slightly by adding some chopped crystallised ginger into the sponge mixture. I think I will be making these again.