Autumn Limitations

Hello all!  I thought I wasn't going to make it for Tim's tag this month, but I'm here!

And it was all the more galling because the inspiration tag from Mr Holtz featured such a cool technique, which was great fun to play with, and will definitely become a regular part of the repertoire... but I'm happy to say it all worked out in the end!

So here's my take on the June tag.

It's not very summery, I know, but I was limited by the same thing as many of you in that the butterfly Framelits haven't arrived yet (they're on pre-order and I can't wait to play!).

So that involved some lateral thinking in what to use instead - and I ended up in Autumn (it's been happening once or twice lately).  The sentiment really turned out to be very apt!









As I say, the technique itself was great fun (I'm not going to go over it... you can get all the details so much better from Tim's own tutorial!).

I messed around with it in several variations over the course of the month, while waiting for things to dry on other stuff I was making (it's very quick too!).

Sometimes I worked in colour ways which felt very comfortable...








And sometimes I pushed the boat out a bit with my colour palettes - not very me, you'll notice, but worth a try!

I've certainly got plenty of backgrounds ready to play with thanks to Tim.









In the end, though, it came down to the decision to use the smaller stamps from the Autumn Leaves set as my images... and that meant creating another background using the Woodgrain stencil.

The colours used are mainly Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs throughout.

The leaves themselves follow some of the watercolouring techniques from Tim's Compendium of Curiosities III, so as I'm going to enter it over at Linda Ledbetter's for Challenge 5 too, I won't go into that either.










Suffice it to say, I stamped the images direct onto the background in Archival ink first, and then created my additional leaves to go over the top.













Once I'd done my watercolouring, I decided the leaf skeletons needed a little more definition again, so I used a PITT pen just to sketch in a bit more detail over the top.













Also, I wanted to echo the botanical labelling that you get with the butterflies, so I used some Remnant Rubs to add the Figure labels beside each leaf.












I stamped the sentiment in Jet Black, but even with some clear embossing it wasn't quite holding its own against the woodgrain.

To make it pop a bit more, I coloured in the edges with a black PITT pen and the main face of the letters with Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge Distress Markers before clear embossing again.












The gloss and the texture means it pings a bit better against the background.

I added an Idea-ology Muse Token, altered with some Tarnished Brass Distress Paint and some Florentine Gold Treasure Gold.

There are also gold highlights around the leaf edges and tag edges in places too.  And I edged both the central panel and the tag in the background with Potting Soil Archival to give good definition and draw the eye inwards.

I had a lovely time making the "Paula Bow"... so simple and yet so effective.  There's nothing like a bit (or a lot!) of dyed crinkle ribbon to finish off a tag.

So thank you for another fabulous piece of inspiration this month, Tim - this is a technique which will definitely be featuring again.  Quite apart from anything else, I've got all those other variations to use up!!

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I'm in the usual end-of-month chaos, so forgive me for being somewhat slack on the visiting.  

I always seem to be on catch up at the moment, but I'm really looking forward to spending some time finding out what you've all been up to lately.

Have a lovely weekend all!

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world any more.  There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
Albert Schweitzer






I'd like to enter this as my June tag in Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2014, and also in Challenge 5 of the Compendium of Curiosities III Challenges hosted by the fabulous Linda Ledbetter.