A Tim Holtz Fan in King Arthur's Court: A Medieval Take on Vintage

In January, I spent a great deal of time working with Ranger Inkssentials Foil Tape Sheet-covered grungeboard for my Looking Ahead with Tim ... Holtz January 2014 Tag project.  I had some scraps that had been embossed with Tim's embossing folders and wondered what they would look like if I painted and distressed them.  That was the beginning of this fanciful and fun project.

After playing around with foil-taped grungeboard, I decided to try embossing foil-taped Distress Core'dinations Cardstock.  This held up much better to the Distress Paint treatment and all of the sanding and scratching other distressing techniques I threw at it.  I absolutely loved the vintage metal effect.

My next question was which embossing folder I wanted to use.  I tried several, but when I tried the one with the Lion from Tim's Sizzix London Icons and Union Jack Set, I knew this was the one!  And then ... I found the new challenge blog, A Vintage Journey  that is devoted to vintage projects that are strongly influenced by the works of Tim Holtz.  (Sooooooo excited about this new blog.)  With the first challenge being Anything Tim, this project took wing and a medieval book was born.

So, I used some Tim products to distress the heck out of this embossed piece. I used Barn Door Distress Paint to coat all of the metal.  I sanded off some of the paint and added some scratches.  Then I used a Black Soot Distress Marker  and black Sharpie to add outlines and smudges of black as if the metal had tarnished.

 

Here are a couple of photos in different light to see how the painted metal looks with all the embellishments. For those of you familiar with Tim Holtz products, you might recognize some of the embellishments.  First, edged the entire embossed Lion with Ranger metal foil tape that has been embossed with Tim's Dot Matrix Texture Fades folder.  I painted it with Black Soot Distress Paint and sanded it.  To dull the bright sanded metal look, I went back over it with a Black Soot Distress Marker and wiped off most of it.  It almost looks like small nail heads around the border.

I looked at some charms, but went back to my embossing folders for additional embellishments. I went to an usual one ... one of Tim's Halloween folders.  Again, I used the metal foil covered cardstock and a spooky fence Texture Fade.  I cut it into pieces and created "crowns" on the corners.

Then I grabbed Tim's Patchwork Texture Fade and grabbed two copies of the flourish panet made a great surround for the clasp closure.  Oh and that closure too is from Tim Holtz.  It's a grungeboard hinge that I embossed with silver embossing powder and sanded.  I used some Black Soot Distress Ink to bring out that tarnished look.  A tiny brad completed the working closure.

The cover is made out of some textured paper that I bought at Michaels.  I ran it through the "stripes" textures fade from Tim's Americana pack for the closure and binding and the Damask Texture Fade for the middle part of the cover.

I used some of Tim's Linen Ribbon to detail the spine!  Black alcohol ink was used to dye the ribbon.  I cut slits in paper binding and inserted the ends.  The ends were taped on the interior of the binding.

And here is the back of the cover:

 So what's on the inside?  Good question!  The answer: A lot of Tim Holtz stamping and Distress Markers and Distress Ink.  I even included some photocopies of actual medieval manuscript snippets (thoroughly grunged) as well.  The pages were taped with fabric tape (colored with black alcohol ink) along the spine side.  It created a great edge for my Mom to hand sew the pages together.

I'm running out of energy to type all of this, so I will let pictures tell the rest of my medieval time traveling story.

 I loved creating this project.  I hope you find time to create a project you love as well!

-- Mary Elizabeth