Black Hole Art Studio: The French General Meets Tim Holtz

Saturday, June 9, 2012

The French General Meets Tim Holtz

I just love this new paper line from EK Success/ Jolee's called The French General. I wanted to see how well this French countryside inspired collection would coordinate with Tim Holtz's vintage, shabby line of products. I was inspired by my dear friend, Ronnie Goff, to use canvases for this project. These two 8" x 8" canvases are the result.

Not so surprisingly, as you can see, the two product lines work quite well together.

The first step is to ink the edges of your canvas using a coordinating ink. In this case, I used Ranger's Distress Ink in Chipped Sapphire on the blue canvas, and Fired Brick on the red canvas.

Now you can distress the edges of your chosen paper using a distressing tool. I did this to imitate frayed fabric, in keeping with the sewing theme. If you do not want to leave the edges white, as shown, then you can ink the edges of the paper with the same ink.

Next, adhere the paper to your canvas on the top, and cut strips from coordinating paper to adhere to the sides. I used a tacky white glue and a foam brush to accomplish this.

Before attaching any embellishments, I used a small piece of drywall tape as a stencil to dab paint onto the paper. I did this on both canvas pieces to help tie them both together.

Die cut various Tim Holtz dies from chipboard. I have listed those dies used below. In this picture, I used the Tim Holtz On The Edge Sewing Border die and painted the scissors and bobbin using Ranger Silver Paint Dabber.

I want to make this border more dimensional, so I cut a second piece from chipboard, and cut the pieces apart, as shown in the picture.

When I flip this scissor piece over, I get the second blade of the scissors that was cut off in the border die.

I also painted this piece with the silver dabber paint, and using a piercing tool, I punched a hole through both scissor blades and inserted a brad. I also layered the second spool piece on top of the first for added dimension, inking the chipboard with Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain Distress Inks, then wrapping floss around it and inserting a needle. Antique buttons were sewn through the chipboard pieces to attach them, which is the only reason I did not cut them off from the bottom layer.

To make the bobbin look more realistic, I punched a 7/8" circle from a scrap of metal flashing, and traced the holes onto it. Then I used a cropadile to punch the 1/4" middle hole and the smaller holes using the 1/8" punch. I attached the piece of flashing to the chipboard bobbin with an eyelet through the center hole.

Here are a few more closeups of various parts of the canvas.