Twelve Tags of Christmas- Day 4

 As much as I liked the tag from Day 3, I decided to skip it...at least for now. The interesting techniques for the day 4 tag were beckoning. As usual, I lacked many of the supplies Tim used for his tag. What I did have was an embossing folder with the snowman. So I pulled out a thin piece of chipboard...the kind you can get from the top of a scrapbook paper pad. It was just the right thickness to emboss while at the same time thin enough so that I could cut out parts of the center. After embossing the chipboard, I cut the snowman out and carefully extracted the snowflakes with an exacto knife.

Once the cutting was complete, I applied a thin coat of white acrylic paint.After the paint dried, I added the rock candy crackle glaze.

While I waited for the glaze to dry and crack to perfection, I made the background sheet. I used a plain sheet of kraft paper as my base. Since I do not have all of the inks Tim used, I chose to stamp my blue ink pad onto wax paper. I stamped a square about the same size as the base paper. I then added a little bit of my homemade white mist. The white mist consists of watered down acrylic paint with a bit of perfect pearls powder.

Swirling the cardstock around on the wax paper created a wonderful sort of mottled effect. I set it aside to allow it time to dry. Now it was time to move back to the snowman. Once again, I did not have the inks Tim used. This time, I substituted glimmer mist. I opend the bottle and dabbed the dropper onto various sections of the snowman. I was pleased at how the mist seeped into the cracks. I applied the heat tool as Tim suggested and saw the white of the base coat become more apparent while the cracks kept the colour I had infused them with. I later noticed some of the glaze falling off.I am not sure why. Maybe it was the materials I used. To combat this, I applied a thin coat of glossy accents over the whole snowman.

Tim Holtz Embossing folder, Gauze from a first aide kit.glossy accents,
Ranger rock candy crackle glaze, Martha Stewart snowflake punch
clear packaging, Basic Grey Flourish stamp,
Technique Tuesday snowflake stamps
Colorbox ink in white and Blue Lagoon
Glimmer mist in electric blue, frost and spring violet

I raided the first aid kit for some gauze which I cut down and tied into a scarf. Thin clear packaging was punched into snowflake shapes. I am very pleased with the results. Most of all though, I am pleased with the new technique I learned for creating a unique background.