Anyway, back to the ATC. Our mission this month was "Fall" and the special embellishment was supposed to be stickles. I kept mine kinda simple this month as I had some other things going on. I used some copper embossing powder for the sentiment (CTMH Stamp set-Captured Moments/C1423) and the little leaves I just punched out of plain white copy paper and covered them with copper stickles. After they were dry, I inked the edges with wild honey distress ink. The acorn was cut with one of Tim's dies (Autumn Gatherings) and I applied a bit of stickles to it as well. I used the same wild honey distress ink for stamping my tree (same stamp set as above) and while it was wet I applied some perfect pearls powder in copper. Guess I was in a coppery mood this weekend. After the ink dried, you just brush away the remaining powder and the rest of it stays where the ink was wet. It was one of the techniques that Tim had in his online class that I took. He sprayed his with water afterwards so the ink would wick but I didn't want to take it that far so I just let it dry and brushed away the extra. I inked the edges with vintage photo and called it over. I thought they turned out pretty cool looking.
And the tag, well, it turned every bit as pretty as his did, I think. I have to admit, I tried it three times before I was satisfied with it but I finally achieved the look. The first one I used some different paper to make my tag with, didn't work very well wet. The second one I forgot to put some baby powder on first before I embossed the wheat and the embossing wasn't as crisp as I like it to be. And the third one I tried CTMH ink on the Thankful stamp because I didn't think the archival ink I was using was covering very well. The CTMH ink held most of it's form but it did wick a little bit so the color was more faded. I finally decided to go to Michael's and get a new black archival ink pad, a small one. I have the great big one and it's hard to ink just portions of a stamp with it. I didn't feel like I was getting enough ink on the stamp and it was coming out a little light, plus it's a few years old so it was probably time for a new one anyway. The new one worked much better and I was able to get a good stamping out of it. Glad I made that effort. The rest of it went pretty smoothly. I added a little piece of black netting at the top because it fell out of somewhere and landed on the tag like it wanted to be there so there I put it. It added a bit of punch at the top, lol! I didn't have the token that he used but I had one that said 'thoughts' on it and it seemed to fit, thankful thoughts, ya know! I didn't have his paper string either so I used some jute that I had in my stash. It unraveled kinda like his paper string did and I was able to color some of it to match so.......there you have it.
Hugs,
~ Jody
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