I've had some lovely quality time with my son this evening and it's thanks to Tim Holtz and his new book, A Compendium of Curiosities. It was offered on QVC in the UK on Tuesday as the Today's Special Value and it had a bunch of supplies with it. I decided in the end to buy it so that my son and I could do some crafting together. You see, my son's first love of crafting was inspired by Tim Holtz. He was first exposed to Tim and his techniques at the age of three and he still to this day doesn't know the original function of dominoes- to him, they are for inking, stamping and glossy accenting!
But I digress.
We did the first technique in the book which involved some swiping of ink and some spritzing of water and some pressing on of paper etc etc (if you really want to know, get the book!). My son chose the colours of ink- in this case, fired brick, dried marigold, mustard seed and brushed corduroy.
For my tags, I used the same four original colours and then added some Dusty Concord. I have to. I can't stay away from purple- it's just not my way!!
Technique done, we decided to hit the tags with some glimmer sprays. Mine are in huge bottles. They are Moon something-or-other sprays and I added a whole bunch of distress re-inker to them to make them more interesting. I made a large set of them and I can't remember for the life of me which ink I used in each combination, but my son chose Medieval Gold to over-spray his tags.
I chose the Wild Iris spray for mine. What can I say? The purple continues to exert itself, tranforming my effort into something quite different from my son's. It was very interesting to see where each of us branched off from the starting point of the same four inks.
After heat-setting the sprays, we stamped onto our tags with VersaFine. My son chose a set of train stamps that I also received today from QVC. Trains are his greatest love, and what took him away from crafting with me as much as he used to. It's nice that he can combine the two this way.
I stamped with some swirls and a stylised dragon, taking the opportunity to use the Sepia Accents and Rock Candy Stickles on the dragon and sepia and glossy accents on the swirly leaves and more Stickles on the flower heads.
It's still drying out in a safe place but this is what it looked like when it was wet. :)
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to use mine for yet but I plan to attach some decorative fibres to my tags. I may find some for my boy's tags too and maybe they will become bookmarks or card toppers... or perhaps I will attach them all to a book-ring and keep them as mementos of quality time spent with my son.
Thanks Tim for the inspiration- your new book is fabulous and I will enjoy walking through the rest of it with my son.
