SIMON SAYS STAMP CHALLENGE - SHOW US A TAG

Happy Valentine's Day Everybody!

I am putting the cart before the horse with this post, but since the SIMON SAYS STAMP CHALLENGE is SHOW US A TAG, I'll post a picture of my tags first and then I will tell the story behind them.

This is the front side of the tags.

This is the back side of the tags.

Now for the story behind them....

I saw a folder book made from a manila folder in the current issue of Cloth Paper Scissors and it fascinated me...so I decided to try my hand at making one. I had no idea where I was going with it.  I just wanted to try it!  I pulled out various papers I had laying around and before I knew it, I was sewing the book together.  Here is a picture of the finished book without any tags in it.

I found my stash of some older Tim Holtz' 9x9 Distressables papers and used them throughout almost all of the book.  I stamped vintage buttons on some Sticky Back Canvas and used it as the outer "spine" of book as well as an embellishment on one of the interior pockets.  I sewed the book together and stamped "CREATE" and "TIM" on the outer exposed edges of the manila folder.  It's a cool book but it needed tags!

Since I'd used those Tim Holtz papers that I dearly love to create the book, I decided the tags needed to stay with the Tim Holtz theme.  Almost all of the sayings and stamps are from his stamp collections. 

I used all sorts of techniques in creating the tags; fantasy film for the wings of the little girl sitting on the clock, rusted enamel technique over the saying on the "let yourself fly" tag, other different heat embossing techniques, stamping right on the tag or stamping on cardstock and then popping the image on a tag.  I stamped a "negative strip" on vellum and took a couple of images off of Tim's Photographic stamp to use as the heads inside of the negative strip. It was still hard to see the images so I put cardstock behind it.  Problem solved.  I had neve rdone that before, but I liked the result.  I couldn't go too crazy with embellishments because the book has to be able to half way close. (smile)

Here is a picture of the completed book with the tags slipped into their pockets.

This was my first attempt at a project like this and it won't be my last!  This was so much fun to do and I love how it all came together.  I had no idea which tag was going where as I worked on them.  As Tim always says, "don't over think it".  So, that is what I tried to do.

Have a great week everybody!  Take some time to play...IT'S SOUL FOOD!