cool buttons

We just received some neat clear tabs from Ranger....which of course comes from the creative genius of Tim Holtz (can you tell my heart goes pitter pat when I mention his name?). Anyway...I wanted to fool around with them and Mondays at Wingdoodle is my day to try new products....provided I don't have a pile of boxes from UPS!

So I started out stamping some small parts of rubber stamps on to the shapes. Now Tim uses a lot of these just as is to enhance a card or an area of a piece, but I can't settle for simple. So after stamping with Stazon (because it will work and dry on non porous surfaces) I heat set the image and then stamped a Versamark pad on to it. This enabled me to add Pan Pastels on to the image for color. Now if you haven't tried Pan Pastels....well you have to!! We have a set at the demo table and are happy to break them out for you to try. They are wonderful, smooth and easy to use pastels...they last forever and don't break apart like the little sets that you can get at the "big box" stores (they'll remain nameless). I use Qtips because I feel like I have more control but you can use the tools that come with the PanPastels or make-up sponges. I used quite a few colors and blended them so it gave a nice color effect. I like to seal the final piece with JudiKins' Diamond Glaze...it gives this wonderful glossy dimension to the piece. I also fooled around with Ranger's clear tags and clear buttons. I have a fetish with buttons and use them a lot on my mixed media pieces as well as on my books. Buttons make great closures for books, sew them in place and run a waxed piece of linen from the back side of the book to the front and wrap the thread around the button. Yummy!

this shows how I used these buttons and tags on my own work...combined with my calligraphy I think the final presentation looks pretty good!