January Tag

One of my goals this year is to participate in making all of Tim Holtz tags.
I was hoping to do them last year...but did you see one from me last year?  Nope.
So far I am off to a good start, I completed them before month end.
Not much before month end...but I think its a good start for a procrastinator like me, teehee.

Okay so here is my take on Tim's Tag for January.
What do you think?
I'm really happy with how it turned out.
Now lets get into a bit more detail here shall we ;)

Here is a close up of the top of the tag.
After I cut my gears out, I realized, I think we were suppose to use the bigger dies.
Which I have, but I thought they were the smaller ones...oh well. Guess I should read instructions better, lol.

 Here is a better look of the bottom part of the tag.
I did use the same sentiment that Tim Holtz used on his, but I did add a film strip stamp as the background.

Used the distress ink on the tag after it was embossed. You know how much I love his distress inks. I use it like Mike's Red Hot...I use that shhhht on everything ;)
One tip that I really loved that Tim shared on his blog, was to cut your embossing folder in the middle on the fold, then you can slip your tag up through the fold. Ingenious.
I really like how flicking water, makes the distress ink make pools of colour.

We were to cut the gears out with grunge paper.
I got excited as I had some....then realized..nope I have grunge board. Totally different.
So what I came up with, was to peel apart the grunge board.
Not an easy task.
I had to cut into the the corner edge of the grunge board and then peel the heck out of it to peel it in layers.

I just picked up this pack of grunge board at Micheals for cheap...real cheap.
It also has letters and numbers in it, and that is what I bought it for.
I never thought I would ever use the squares, but I did ;)
Don't you love when that happens.

One of the techniques Tim shared, was to stamp on ribbon.
This wasn't new to me as I have been doing this for quite awhile.
But I kicked it up a notch by first stamping the tape measure with brown staz-on ink. then I took black staz-on for "January."|

 When that was all said and done, I then used distress stain and coloured the rest of the ribbon.
Here is what the ribbon looked like before I added any colour.

Lets take one more look shall we ;)
A few things I had to do different
I used embossing powder on the gears as I didn't have the product Tim used.
I used grunge board pieces for the arrow, as I didn't have the stamp he had.
I used altered grunge board as I didn't have grunge paper.
I used different metal embellishments (like the washer in the bottom corner).
I added a key to the ribbon...just cause I like to add embellishments to my ribbons ;)
But the idea is to try out his techniques. It isn't about making it exactly the same as Tim's tags.

If you have missed it I am doing a giveaway.
Go and check out yesterday's blog post HERE for all the information :)

I hope you all have had a very creative Monday:)
I know I have ;)

Tracy :)