I try to do the Tim Holtz 12 Tags whenever I have a chance. It is a once a month art challenge that I wish I could make time for every month. To see the tag that Tim Holtz made, click here. Of course, most of the time I do not have all of the products that he has and sometimes I don’t really want my tag to look exactly like his. I was missing quite a few of the necessary products, so I improvised. I like how my tag came out though!
If you want to see how I made this tag, then stick around for the rest of the blog post!
Step 1: Tim used tissue tape, but I didn’t have any. I did have some of the tissue that he offers though. I figured I could just use some multi medium to adhere my tissue. WRONG! This created a barrier so my distress inks would not have a porous surface to soak into. You’ll see what happened later on.
Step 2: Tim scribbled various distress inks onto his craft mat, spritzed water and dragged the tag through. I did the same thing, but I used a mixture of distress and adirondack paints. It would have worked ok, but again, that multi medium messed it up and the paint only stuck in a few areas.
Step 3: In this step Tim stamps a big Butterfly in archival ink and then embosses it with clear embossing powder. He laster masks this image and stencils on top of it. I was crafting away from home and had limited supplies. However, I did bring some Art Acetate from Stamp On It with me and I had a butterfly image. I was crafting with my Mom and we wanted to try the glitter technique with the Art Acetate sheets, so I incorporated that into my tag and made it dimensional by bending the wings up. I didn’t add my butterfly until the very end and I used a little bit of Glossy Accents on the body to adhere it. 
Step 4: This is where my tag starts to differ quite a bit. I wanted to do some background stenciling like he did, but not quite yet. Instead I decided to stencil a flower on my tag. I used Luster Mica Powder in Galactic Blue and Hawaiian Orchid. I used a palette knife to lay on some Modeling Paste and then sprinkled the Luster Mica Powders on top while it was still wet. I just tapped off the excess and funneled it back into my jar. Then I spritzed it with water and dried it with my heat tool. You can just set this aside to dry if you don’t want the bubbling that happens when you heat dry modeling paste.
Step 5: Now I wanted to do my background stenciling. I used Tim Holtz Harlequin Layering Tag Stencil with 3 different distress inks. At first, it looked gorgeous, then I realized the distress inks were just going to wipe off the areas where the multi medium was. So, after adding some crinkled seam binding that I colored with the same inks and a Tim Holtz metal embellisment that I found at a scrapbook expo (that I can only guess is a blast from the past, because I’ve never seen it!), I ended up mixing some of the Galactic Blue Luster Mica Powder with the multi Medium and scraped that through the stencil with a palette knife. Multi Medium WILL adhere to Multi Medium, so this finally worked! I also used a sponge dauber to ink the edges of the tag with Salty Ocean Distress ink.
Step 6: I added a Tim Holtz Metal Arrow to cover up the harsh line that I created when applying the Luster Mica Powder/ Multi Medium mix through the harlequin stencil. I also adhered the butterfly at this point.
Step 7: The tag still needed a little something, so I grabbed some of my arrow stamps from one of my Tim Holtz sets and stamped them in Archival Ink. Now the tag is done!
I hope you enjoyed my blog post and thank you so much for stopping by!
Intoxicating Arts 