Monet Butterfly!?

Hello all!  Today, after all those sneak peeks, I'm finally actually here!

Thanks so much for the lovely response to my rusty Bouquet of Barbed Wire over at PaperArtsy... it sounds as though lots of you have headed off to play with the Rusting Powder!!

I've got some more flowers for you today, but these ones are slightly less prickly and decaying.

This - though it may not look like it at first glance - is my take on Tim Holtz's March tag.

I followed the techniques pretty much to the letter, but with some colour changes and a different stencil I've ended up in a very different place.

If you want to see the how-to details, check out Tim's fabulously funky version and you'll find them there.  I'm just here to share a few close-ups of some of my changes and favourite bits.








When Tim invites you to use your favourite Distress Paint colours, you know it's probably going to be a toss up between blue/brown and blue/green combinations here at Words and Pictures.  And with that fabulous butterfly ready to play, it seemed like blue/green was the right way to go.













I've got two of my favourite tissue tapes in the background - not sure why I'm so in love with the cogs and gears one, but it seems to leap to my fingertips very often.

There's Faded Jeans, Evergreen Bough, Salty Ocean, Weathered Wood and Mowed Lawn in the mix, and I had a lovely time marbling them together.

I even ended up with two extra backgrounds to play with after mopping up the leftover paint in different ways.










Pity I hadn't taped them up in advance too, but you can't think of everything.  I couldn't find the end of the tape quickly enough, and didn't want the paints drying on the mat - that would be a waste.










Regulars here will know I'm huge fan of embossing my main images and/or the words on a tag.  But I rarely seem to use black ink these days.  This was no exception.

I blended Cobalt and Olive Archival inks direct on the stamp and then clear-embossed them as per Tim's instructions.










I love the shimmer and how using related ink tones makes the image blend into the background much more in certain lights.










Given my love of words and letters, the Typo stencil Tim used on his tag was one of my first pre-orders, but it's not with me yet, so I turned instead to one of the other new releases, the glorious Blossom stencil.

I used a combination of embossing powders over it - co-ordinating colours of spring greenery with lovely hints of blue and turquoise.










I may not have been quite patient enough in letting the texture paste dry before heating it, but I sort of knew I was jumping the gun.  I quite liked the idea in Tim's warning about the paste bubbling through.








Given the variegated colours I don't really mind that there are some specks of white too.  It's spring blossom after all, and white blossom is my absolute favourite!

Love how you get the butterfly emerging from the texture with Tim's masking technique (and what a great tip about keeping the masks on the stamp sheet - see, that's why they pay him the big bucks!).









Since there's so much colour variation in the background and in the blossom texture, I decided to keep the embellishing fairly minimal.

With all the discoveries that Tim's inspiration always provides, this seemed like the right WordBand.











I've used a bit of Evergreen Bough Distress Paint on all my metal additions...













... including the wire wrapped around the ribbons at the top.  I love dyeing the crinkle ribbon with the DPs - you get this fabulous shabby opaque look.

So, there you have it...

The summery feel of this really pleases me, and I'm thrilled with how the marbled Distress Paints capture something of the look of Monet's lily pond paintings... or is that just me?!

Thank you for inspiring another wonderful journey, Tim, with delicious discoveries along the way.  This tag definitely took me to my happy place - so for that I thank you too.

Thanks to all of you for stopping by, of course, and have a lovely Sunday all!

A fallen blossom
Returning to the bough, I thought --
But no, a butterfly.
Arakida Moritake

I'd like to enter this as my March Tag in Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2015
I'd also like to add it to B is For... (butterfly, obviously) over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge
And I'd like to share my textured blossom as Spring Blooms at the Inspiration Journal
And they're looking for Wings'n'Things at the That's Crafty Challenge Blog, so here are some wings and some things!