Creativation 2020 Artist Spotlight

Hello everyone. I can’t believe it’s March already, for me it’s a great thing that the year is whizzing by and one month closer to my favourite pumpkin season! It’s really never too early for pumpkins! Back to the winter season and I was really surprised and honoured to be asked by Tim Holtz to make a piece for this years Ranger Ink Artist Spotlight. In previous years this was the Ranger Designer Challenge. This year Ranger switched things up and asked each of their signature designers to create a piece and invite five makers to also create a piece of artwork using the designers respective lines to be displayed on the Ranger ink booth at Creativation, in this case, Distress products.

You may know that I’m big fan of distress, all things grungy and all things brown, so this is what I based my piece on.

I also have a big love for the professor and the professor 2 stamp (cms395) is bigger and better. I covered an etcetera tag in a layer of distress crackle texture paste and set aside to dry. I added a layer of distress vintage collage medium and a piece of torn typeset collage paper.

I added a piece of the typeset collage paper over the etcetera tag hole reinforcer. This covered a gear die cut from distress watercolor cardstock which was covered in distress grit-paste and distress crayon. idea-ology hardware heads were added using the new distress collage medium in a bottle which makes the application of these small pieces so simple.

I added this vintage ruler and pocket watch that Tim kindly let me pull out of his box of vintage found things.

Along with this awesome US Customs plaque that I really love, again from Tim’s collection. Something about this just spoke to me… 😉

This awesome metal clock face was also from Tim’s collection, look at how the authentic cracked vintage clock face is so alike the texture paste on the tag. Love the authentic look of the distress crackle texture paste covered with distress vintage collage medium.

The gears on my tag were made by die cutting distress watercolor cardstock with the gearhead thinlits die set covered in a layer of distress vintage collage medium, distress crayon, distress grit-paste for texture and then more distress crayon on top once the grit-paste dried.

I love how the distress grit-paste creates a great rust effect and it’s so easy to do. The outer circle was stamped from the original professor stamp set (cms373) with distress archival ink and covered with distress vintage collage medium and distress crayon added to the edges.

I wanted to share this photo of me putting this together just days before the show! Truthfully, I was terrified of this project, so I procraftinated and put it off. Just putting it out there for anyone that ever struggles with creative mojo or feels pressure when creating anything, I get you. A big shout out to the friends who talked me down off the paper ripping ledge Kaz Hall and Juli Riedel and to Tim Holtz who splattered paint for me because I had “the fear” and Mario Rossi who helped me with construction, that ruler would never have been straight otherwise… 😉 (I think Vicki Evans aka Thelma was still loading her tags into the freezer to see “what if” at that point). Plus any excuse to share one more photo from “that day” is good one!

I loved the projects by the other makers, Paula Cheney, Stacy Hutchinson, Emma Williams, Jennifer McGuire and of course Tim Holtz pieces were awesome. I’m a bit head over heels for Tim’s alcohol ink piece. It’s BEW-TIFUL!

To see the other signature designers displays and more photographs and links, go to the Ranger ink blog.

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a great weekend.

Zoe