September Monthly Tag for Tim Holtz challenge

*Warning*

This post is going to be picture heavy ;)

I have completed my Tag for Tim Holtz monthly tag challenge for September.

Tim focused on his stencils and his distress paints for this month.

I found one of his stencils on our trip and I picked up some of his distress paints as well..but we will get to those in a minute.

I have enjoyed not only coming up with creative ways to make Tim's monthly tags, but also to come up with alternative ways to use the supplies I have.

As we all know, as much as we would love to, we can't all have all of his great supplies :)

I am also making my tags to go with a theme for that month.
So when I think of September I think of the start of school.

One of the supplies Tim used was embossing paste.
I have never heard of this, but it sure looked like drywall compound.
Can you tell I do home repairs as well ;)
My drywall compound was old and mostly dried up, as I have been working on my downstairs bathroom forever and by the looks of this container...took a real long break, lol.
But at the very bottom of the container I found some I could work with.

I have to say...this technique I loved!!!!
I like the dimension it gives and it came out so crisp and clean.

The next step was to use Picket Fence distress paint and dab it on over another of his stencils.
I have a lot of stencils from when I went to school, many moons ago, so I just used one of them. I save everything, lol.
I guess I didn't read Tim's instructions well, as he stated to use a clean sponge, lol.

Now to play with his distress paints.
I picked up 2 sets on our trip.
One with my darker colours and the other set more pastel colours.
I am on the fence about these.
The seemed to make my tag paper pill. But I am more sure it was from me adding to much water to the tag.
Also it looked like when Tim did it, they blended so much more nicely.
But then again this is my first time using them.

Tim used more stencils, so I pulled out some of mine and added distress inks...I think distress inks are my favourite of all Tim Holtz products.
I also added some distress ink (black soot) to the raised stencil area.
See how the distress paints seemed to resist the colour of the picket fence I used on the alphabet stencil...so cool.
This is the point where I had to get ready to go to the cottage for the weekend.
I swear this tag was calling my name all weekend, I even had a dream about it, lol.

Note to Self
Don't bring my phone in my craft area while creating...I will loose it in all the creative chaos.

I wanted to use this washi tape for the tags ribbon.
But it was a bit on the white side, so I used distress ink to give it that aged look to match the tag better.
I then went back and used a darker colour.
I then folded the washi tape and stuck it to itself and fed it through the tags hole.
I then added some twine and my charm.

Lets take a closer peek at the details, shall we ;)
I used a stamp set that came with one of my Pure Innocence girls for the saying.
A closer look at the ruler stencil :)
See the little map stamp of Canada? :)

See how I used the tissue/washi tape in place of the ribbon.
I used a fishing swivel to attach the "inspire" disk to the ribbon.
I have used this many times over the years, but these swivels were a pain to open. I told Wayne, a man would have not fought with them as I had, they would have thrown them over the boat first try, lol.
I used my Graphic 45 school papers for this tag. I really like that collection.
I also used a dotted banner stamp in burgundy at the top.

A few other embellishments I used is the pen nib....I really do love these.  I also do calligraphy, maybe that is why.
Also a clock charm. Not sure about you, but I always watched the clock in class ;)
A closer look at how the Picket Fence resisted the paints. Even though it was a little coloured up from my sponge ;)

And there you have it my September tag for Tim Holtz monthly challenge.
I really had fun with this one :)
It seems like forever since I have been in my craft room.

I hope you all had a creative Monday :)

Edited to add my planner page challenge photo. I was so excited that I got Tim's tag completed I totally forgot to post my planner photo and today is the last day :)
Day #30
"Wide Open"
Here is my pages from last week.
You can see on Sunday when I went to try those pens out at Staples ;)

Tracy :)