/* */ Beulah Bee

March 06, 2014

Slate-colored Junco


I've got a thing for tags and make a lot of them. I also make greeting cards but I guess I feel more liberated working on tags and I like the challenge of this odd-ball format.

The long and narrow space used to feel confining but it doesn't bother me anymore and the manila cardstock is tough and can take my abuse.

For this tag, I cut birds from an old book, used book text for the background and a 12" x 12" stencil from Crafter's Workshop called Branches. It's a favorite of mine and I highly recommend it. There are two versions, a positive (208) and a negative (251). The leaves were stamped and filled in with colored pencils.

I made it so I could link up to Tag It, the Wednesday challenge theme at Simon Says Stamp, for a chance to win the random drawing.

But I can't let this challenge theme go by without sharing my all-time, most favorite tag.

In his September, 2012, tag post, Tim Holtz did a demo on an embossed metal background and I used this technique to make a steam-punked version of my cat, Howie (click to enlarge it). His goggles were made from polymer clay and the scarf was made from cheese cloth. It was crazy fun!

March 04, 2014

Tick Tock


Some vintage photos ask to be understood more than others, it's a quality that draws me in and was especially true with this one--the couples' expressions and clothing tell a story I long to know.

I was inspired to use it because of the Monday blog challenge at Simon Says Stamp which is Tick Tock. The tag was an exercise in image transfers and this is what I learned:

A page of clocks from the Lost and Found paper stash was used for the background. Since transferred images can become transparent, I thought the background might be too dark so I put a thin coat of gesso over the clocks. But since the photo had a lot of solid dark areas, I really didn't need to lighten the background and if I hadn't, the clock images would have been more pronounced.

If you're wondering how I tinted the photo, it was "glazed" with acrylic paint. Glazing is just adding a clear medium to paint to give it a transparent quality. Best results are achieved with pigments that are naturally transparent and I avoid using chalky craft paints for this technique.

March 02, 2014

Royals


Is it just me or, are some of what seems like the easiest of Tim's monthly tags deceptively difficult? It took four tries to get a similar effect but it was great practice just the same. I'd either get a stamped impression that was too dark or too light or when I rubbed, it would smear too much.

I followed each and every one of his steps except I pounced ink through the stencil instead of using a spritzer, I didn't use a metal word band and my twine is a gold ribbon cut in strips and pasted on. I used stamps (PaperArtsy and Prima) with a similar format as the feather and the nest, my stencil was hand-made.

The text came from lyrics in a song called Royals by Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor aka Lorde who's from New Zealand. This song has received a lot of play time here so that's why I thought of it.

As always, I'm really looking forward to this month's link-ups and aren't we lucky that Tim provides such great tutorials (and products) and a forum for sharing our work! If you've never participated, I encourage you to try--it's really great fun.