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Sunday, August 24, 2014

Julie vs. Clogged Bottle Tips

Greetings, peeps.  Ever have one of those days?  Yikes.  Clogged Stickles and Diamond Glaze bottles attempted to lure me into a creative slump this afternoon.  Defying the odds I soldiered on.  I have some butterfly ATCs on my To-Do list and I wanted to play along with the A Vintage Journey Challenge this week.  I've never participated in the A Vintage Journey challenges before, but couldn't resist their ATC challenge this week.  Per the 'travelling instructions' prepare to dive into my Tim Holtz-influenced psyche.


In Tim-esque fashion, I built up several layers on my background using Distress Inks, stamps and stencils.  Flicked some water around too.  Metal was incorporated on my ATC in the staples and my steampunkish (kinda) butterfly.

Most telling though was my firm embracing of Tim's 'Embrace Imperfection' philsophy.  Oh, I embraced it.  

My first challenge was coloring my embossing paste.  I knew I wanted to use the Worn Lipstick that I had used in top corner for the stenciled circles.  BUT I only had Distress Ink - no stain, reinker, etc.  I tried smooshing some (thank God for the minis) on my palette tray and then mixing in the paste.  It was too pale though and now that the paste was in there I couldn't really add more without possibly getting some on my ink pad.  No bueno.  I eventually just kept cleaning off my palette knife and then swiping my ink pad on that to mix it in.  

My next 'ugh' was an unfortunate clogging incident resulting in me repeatedly jamming a needle into the tip of my Diamond Glaze bottle to get the dried clump out of the way so I could glue on the key.  Squeeze, jab, squeeze, jab...finally I gave it an extra squeeze and that did the trick.  Sadly it also resulted in an oversized puddle smack dab in the middle of my butterfly.  Stickles to the rescue.  Oh wait.  That was clogged too (fortunately that bottle was more cooperative).

Still with me?  Here's another view of my ATC:


Thank you for enduring my verbose post today.  I wish you a fabulous week!

6 comments:

sally said...

Great TIM inspired ATC!

Corrie Herriman said...

In spite of all your troubles today, your ATC is beautiful and you DID win from those bottles ! lol
Corrie x

massofhair said...

Way to go Julie! Fantastic that you didn't give up, some great rescues from clogged bottles and having no DStains to producing a brilliant ATC:-) xxx

My name is Cindy said...

Some days thinking of ways to get your stash to work harder makes it more interesting! Great ATC. Cindy

Marjie Kemper said...

A fabulous ATC, Julie. So vibrant!

Words and Pictures said...

Fabulous colours and I love that butterfly! Thanks so much for joining us on A Vintage Journey.
Alison x