CC3C Challenge - Photo Tinting, Mud and Simple Gifts

Compendium of Curiosities III Challenge 12 - Photo Tinting!

I have been participating in the Compendium of Curiosities III Challenge on the Studio L3 blog by Linda Ledbetter with so much inspiration from the fabulous Curiosity Crew!!!  For Challenge 12 we are creating a project using the Tim Holtz Photo Tinting technique found on page 41 of Compendium of Curiosities 3 by Tim Holtz. Challenge 12 is sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique, with additional prizes donated by Mario Rossi and Tim Holtz!

Photo from a slide
Last year for Christmas my mom gave our family a thumb drive containing hundreds of photos scanned from her old collection of slides she had taken over the years! The gift was a labor of love. As I was looking through the images I was laughing about one particular photo of me. It's one of those photos that really captures a moment that reveals the true self...the real me.

When I was young, our family went on vacation to Lake Powell in Utah/Arizona with my uncle's family as they had a boat. We met them there for a family camping/ boating trip.
In the photo I had sunburned legs, so I was enjoying some cool mud on my legs next to the lake but then I realized that I could also make a creation with mud on my legs and became engrossed in my cool mud creation. I remember at the time thinking that I didn't want to get up because I didn't want to disturb my goblin valley, or stalagmite formation on my lap, so I just sat there for awhile with it on my lap. It makes me laugh now because the photo is very me!

So here are the project details.

Photo Tinting
I followed the photo tinting technique found on page 41 of Compendium of Curiosities 3 by Tim Holtz. It worked very well! I put it inside a Tim Holtz cabinet card. I used distress powder to rust the viewmaster reel. It's a smaller sized reel die from Sizzix by Echo Park.

Aida Haron - Tim Holtz Media Team

Background Inspiration
For my background I was inspired by the mixed media canvas by Aida Haron who is part of the Tim Holtz Media Team. I liked her techniques and the way she organized the canvas. Check out her post on the Tim Holtz blog for a great tutorial.
I also painted over torn bits of scrapbook paper, added die cut leaves and painted over them, I used paint, die, many stencils, stamps, die cut objects, watercolor with distress inks, spattered with the spritzer tool, etc. I used the Tim Holtz stamp "worn text" to stamp "create" and the numbers, and various other stamps I had. I used an old sizzix leaves die on the background called flowers, branches and leaves. The Tim Holtz "Spring Greenery" strip die would have looked cool too. The dot stencil is from Tim Holtz. Some of my other stencils are very old from the earliest scrapbooking days.

 

Crackle Butterflies 

My butterflies are plaster in a chocolate mold, again. I've been having fun playing with plaster in the chocolate molds lately. Some kind of nostalgia thing again from my youth. Here's the mold I used. It's fun because the chocolate molds usually only cost $2.00 so it's not a big expense to give them a try. I've been mixing up permastone with water in a plastic cup that I pour into the molds. It's not expensive either and it dries pretty quick. It never sticks to the molds!

Tim's Sand
I was so happy about the sand oozing out of my tinted photo. The sand was created using the technique used by Tim Holtz for his 12-tags of July tutorial. I just used different colors to match the red dirt of Lake Powell. I used the Tim Holtz strip die "Chip Block" alphabet for my project title, which I covered with the faux "sand". I used "Ransom" alpha-parts to spell Vic, using another technique found in Compendium of Curiosities III.

The Fish
The fish are 3 beads on some layers of foam dots. The fish were in my collection of treasures for some unknown reason. I purchased them a long time ago from an Etsy shop called The Sample Room. Lucky for you, you can still purchase these fish for $3.00 here. The fish are swimming through a Martha Stewart Stencil called Cathedral Lace.

Thanks for letting me share my "Simple Gifts" project with you. I hope you will stop and appreciate the "Simple Gifts" in your lives and appreciate all the little things that make you who you are!!!

More about Mud

This was not my first experience with mud creations. When my friend and I were about 11 years old we became intrigued by a large hole we found in the field near our house. The hole was about a foot wide and about 2 feet deep. We immediately got a hose and filled it with water making a mud slurry by stirring it with a stick. Then we sat down and dangled our legs into the mud until it was up to our knees making mud knee socks. We were so pleased by this that we got out and let the mud dry on our legs and walked around the neighborhood sporting our mud knee sock fashion statement. Knee socks were in style at the time. Then we realized the mud must have contained clay so as to stick so well to our legs. We ran back and gathered some mud clay from the side of the hole until we had collected enough to make 2 clay pots. We were very proud of our work and felt like ancient Pueblo Indians as we had been studying their history at school. I painted my clay pot with the appropriate designs from the ancient Pueblo period, then made a beaded bracelet on a loom to go with my theme. I might be tempted to do the same today.

The Simple Gifts Song
It was fun to reminisce making this project in celebration of the simple things in life like finding joy in a mud creation or celebrating the colors and textures found in nature or the feeling of summer sun, wind and water. These simple things that I love are the simple gifts in life. My son and I used to go to his guitar lessons where he played in a kid guitar ensemble and they would practice the beautiful song "simple gifts". Even though they were young, when they played all together it sounded so beautiful. My daughter also played Simple Gifts with her orchestra as a child. The simple gift of going to a music lesson with a child, and now watching the child all grown up now teaching many children to play "simple gifts" as well as teaching them that they all have their own simple gifts to share.

The simple gift of teaching your grandchildren how to properly play with mud which your own children do not really appreciate you teaching them, BUT you do not care as you know that there is joy to be found in the simple and that learning to appreciate the simple things is a gift in and of itself.

The Piano Guys and Simple Gifts
Here are the piano guys playing a medley of "Over the Rainbow and Simple Gifts!"