Sweet Determination - Tim Tag for February

I love this sweet, serious, determined little person (part of the Tim Holtz Found Relatives set), and was myself determined to find a way to use her image.  I am not a fan of Valentine's Day overall, and as I live solo couldn't see doing a pretty card to give someone.  But I could make a "baby book" page for this wonderful little girl for the 2015 February Tim Holtz Tag.



Warning - lots of pictures here, lol!

 I knew I wanted use her image as a portrait, so started looking for a way to frame her, and settled on the Tim Holtz Baroque die, using the largest Oval mover and shaper dies as the aperture.

I then applied Ranger Texture Paste through a very detailed doily stencil to create some "carved" texture to the frame.

 Once dry, I sprayed with Distress Stain in Spun Sugar, Tattered Rose, Gathered Twigs and Tarnished Brass, trying to create a rose gold effect.

I then turned to my image.  She started like this:

 I colored her dress and hair bow with Spun Sugar using a Distress Ink pen, and added some "smocking" using a Tattered Rose Distress Ink pen.  I cut the image to fit the frame (with enough edging to which I could glue the frame).  She then looked like this:

I auditioned some commercial paper to be her overall background, and ended up with this from Prima's Londonderry pack, which I picked up online a while ago:

Now to put the frame on:

The tag is a GIANT size 12 - I might as well have used an art journal for this like Kezzy did!  The tag background was created by painting with Spun Sugar and Tattered Rose.

It seemed a bit bright, so I toned it down with a bit of Abandoned Coral, believe it or not!  That color seems very bright in itself, but it worked here as a calming influence, picking up on the colors in the little flowers in the background.

Then I started arranging my layers, per Tim's step-outs.

The hearts are from the new Tim Holtz "Heartfelt" die - I LOVE that it makes so many sizes at once! I did not end up using all of these  hearts....so now have some pre-made ephemera, embellishments or whatever we call them to use on a future project!  I used a number of the very small hearts, covered with Distress Glitter, on the final project.

Part of what I wanted to incorporate from the get-go were images from NiceCrane's beautiful Beatrix Potter series.  Here, I used two from the Peter Rabbit series.

I added some other pieces to complete the patchwork of paper background...including several little pieces from Linda at the Funkie Junkie Boutique - she always sends along some wonderful little  things with your order!  Here I used her little script stamped heart and the butterfly (which I had sprayed for another project).

 I attached a metal token which I distressed (although I am not sure how!)  Note the little heart with Picked Raspberry Distress Glitter....

and a wonderful little heart charm also from the Funkie Junkie Boutique which I distressed with Ranger's Brick Antiquities embossing powder, and attached with a similarly distressed ornate brad.  I backed these with another heart from the Heartfelt die, stained in Picked Raspberry (without glitter).

The letters were cut with Brenda Walton's Antiqua set, and embossed with a mix of Ranger's Red Pepper and Tim Holtz Tattered Rose embossing powders, then knocked back with watered down white gesso, and a spritz of Abandoned Coral distress stain spray.

I added a bit of ribbon stained in Picked Raspberry to the top and here is the final project!

Thank you so much for stopping by, and please do leave a comment - I love hearing from you!