September Tag of 2013

After seeing Tim Holtz's post featuring his new layering stencils, I preordered some right away. That's why I was so excited that his September tag used them in so many different ways. However I was really bummed when I got an email saying that my order won't be shipped until late September, so I had to rethink my options without spending any more money. Then I starting wondering whether I could cut my own stencils from acetate using my Cricut mini. Several people posted success stories online so I decided to give it a try. Overall I was happy with my results.

The embossing paste and Distress paint techniques using the stencils went smoothly. The problem I ran into was using Distress stains for the background color. I sprayed the tags before applying the stain and although it went on smoothly, the colors were too vivid for my taste. Here are the first ones I did.

Next I tried diluting the stain, and I was getting closer to something I liked.

I think the bright red was the jarring note, so by eliminating it I was happier with this next background. Still it wasn't to my taste.

Finally I decided to stick with shades of blue and I finally achieved a background that I was happy with. Instead of introducing a lot of other colors with the Distress inking portion, I just used a variety of blues for my next layers of stenciling (Chipped Sapphire, Broken China, Faded Jeans, and Tumbled Glass) as well as Black Soot. The pear was stamped using black Archival ink and the words were shaded and outlined with Pumice Stone ink and Distress marker. The tag was embellished with a keyhole and a charm that I first painted with black acrylic paint (which I partially removed) and then highlighted with patina Rub 'n Buff (although the pictures don't show it very clearly).

The last step was staining the crinkle ribbon, then stenciling stars in Faded Jeans ink. This is probably the first tag of 2013 that I really liked! The process was also a lot of fun!