The least fun craft experience of the year so far . . .

It started innocently enough . . . browsing my blog list, when I came across a challenge to make an altered tag, with a link to a Tim Holtz video.

Bad thing #1: He was demonstrating his distress inks, which aren't exactly new, but I never realised how awesome and versatile they are!  My internal wish-list, which has essentially been lying dormant this year, went into over-drive!  Wouldn't it be great to have those Distress Inks in every colour! And how about those stamps he's using!  To die for!  Now, if you're confused as to why this is a bad thing, let me explain what used to happen with my "wish list" items.  Many times it would be months between being inspired by a particular stamp/embellishment/whatever and actually buying it.  By then, I would have no idea of what the original inspiration even was, or else the desire to try it may have been superseded by some newer idea. 

so anyway, I decided to try and combat that particular attach of the "I wants" and try to modify his techniques using what I have, "Spend Less, Craft More" style.

And so we come to Bad thing #2: I decided to start my background with a direct-to-paper method using some hardly-touched chalk ink pads.  Problem was, they were so dry, in the process of dragging the pad across the paper, I actually dragged the ink pad off the cover! 
At this point, I thought some re-inking was well in order.  Which brings me to a sad little confession: I have something like about 60 ink-pads, and re-inkers for less than half of them.  As I was re-inking, I was observing the sad state some of my pads are now in, some have cracked, some have lost their sponginess.  So the new agenda for early 2012: work out how much I am prepared to spend on re-inkers, which colours to invest in and which ones to sacrifice. 

That really took the wind out of my sails, but come Sunday I was determined to get this tag made.  I didn't use enough ink to totally cover the tag, but I decided I didn't mind the effect.  You probably can't tell from the photo, but the Pearl-ex on the stamped images has a lovely shiny effect.
It's not a really polished project, (in fact I will probably redo the sentiment on another layer before I give this card away) but I'm proud of myself for seeing it through to this stage, and it was great to be reminded of the Pearl-ex powders that have been sitting neglected in my stash for so long, hopefully I will find some time to play with them again soon!