Plaids Are In This Spring

Whew...our house is finally on the market. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of painting, carrying boxes, packing boxes, carrying boxes, cleaning, sorting, carrying boxes. No time for playing in the Fun Room until now, and I'm a happy camper that I'm getting something into Linda Ledbetter's very fun Grungy Monday challenge. Linda's Studio L3 blog was one of the first ones I visited on a regular basis as I started diving into this wonderful creative and blog world.

So, the challenge this week was to use Tim Holtz's fun, and somewhat challenging plaid technique. I've done this before, and playing with alcohol inks definitely makes my heart sing, so it was fun to try some non-Christmas colors. Since patience continue to evade me, I tend to swipe in the opposite direction without putting new ink on, which results in some muted colors, but hey, it's all a process right?

I've been playing around with Tim's stamps Fairytale Frenzy Stamps and since Mr. Mojo wasn't all that excited about working, I used some of those ideas. I pulled a green tag out of my drawers; to be honest I don't know what the first layer was - maybe paint. But it was too dark, so out came my favorite Picket Fence Stain. Next I used a little flourish mask on the bottom and put some Bundled Sage Distress Ink on the foam pad that said Evergreen Bough and applied it all over the tag. Finally I stamped the butterfly for a ghost effect in Bundled Sage DI as well. Finally I stamped the branch on with Peeled Paint DI.

I adhered the plaid paper to some grunge paper, managed to let it dry even, and then started cutting out butterflies. These were my two favorite. I was going to glue them down in the middle, but horror of horror the backs were naked when a light bulb flashed. Out came the Perfect Pearl powder, a mist of water on the craft sheet and pretty soon I was painting the backs and edges lovely colors....

Thanks again to the lovely Ellen Vargo who turned me onto the perfect pearls trick. They are one of my new favorite things now.

To finish the tag I broke out my beautiful, embossed metal which was totally Tammy Tutterow's idea, but oh my, what fun it is to create, and how cool it looks when you are done. I spent one whole Sunday morning playing with my Melting Pot and embossing powders and my note that day is that it is just like painting with embossing powder. And now that I look at my tag, and Tammy's I see a striking resemblance....amazing how things stick in your subconscious. The techniques I used on the background were different, but the effect is very similar so thank you Tammy!

Sorry so wordy tonight; but I've been away. Good to be back. Enjoy.