Tim Holtz distressed!

Today seems to be another cold and dismal day. The weather here is totally crazy; we get 1 or 2 days when the temperatures soar,followed by thunder and lightning and rain, and it feels like autumn again. I'm sitting here wrapped in a blanket this morning, feels strange in the middle of July,
Today I got another friendly letter from the Town authorities, with a small - and very bad! black and white photo. Apparently I was exiting the tunnel by the Rhine and must have been driving a bit too fast. The strange thing, is that I drive through this tunnel every Monday, on the way to my Doc's, and then again on the way back. It is always full, stop and go traffic, driving slower than a snail walks. On one day, there was no traffic jam. And I was evidently so happy that I exceeded the speed limit. So I will have to make another donation to the town funds! Why don't they give me a rebate for all the times when I had to crawl through there? Life is sometimes unfair....
Anyway, today I did not drive through the tunnel, and spent my time crafting and painting. And I did some H*******k. It was probably the shock from the speeding fine!
At the *Three Muses* challenge blog, they want to see famous people steampunked. Hmmmm! I was rather at a loss whose picture I should use. Then I remembered a photo of me taken with Tim Holtz, when he visited our little craft shop last year. Well, I'm not exactly famous, but Tim is definitely famous, at least in the blogging and crafting world, so I decided to distress Tim! I printed the photo onto a transparency in black and white (no coloured ink in the printer, I think it drinks it at night when I'm asleep!). Then I distressed some water-colour paper, using the clock and cogs templates, and a home made spray using vintage photo ink and perfect pearls. I die-cut more cogs using the *gadget gears* die, and cut a few pieces out of a Dezinaworld Steampunk sheet, and pushed them all around till I liked it. Then I added a TH branch tree, and a die cut of a winged lady that I got from a friend. And finally, I gave Tim a game-spinner. The King of distress has been distressed!

And on the *Blog Challenge Garden* Rebecca wants to see tags with a black and orange colour combo. Not really my fave, but what to do? I found a white tag on which I recently stuck two printed strips before painting it with gesso and leaving it in the kitchen. So, I distressed it with wild honey, rusty hinge, and a bit of black, and then stamped butterflies in black all over it. Caroline recently sent me a giant, die cut butterfly - in black! Predestined for this tag! And I have had an orange, acrylic flower in my stash, waiting to be used.....And here it is! I'm not sure if I really like it, I think I need to cut the wire stem off the flower!

And I was a busy bee yesterday. I made a little book for the Craft Room challenge. The ladies there want to see butterflies this time. I used 2 sheets of paper from the *Sasha* stack from Anna Griffin. One sheet has been cut to make the pages, and then I cut butterflies out of the second sheet. The paper is pale blue with flocked butterflies in different sizes on one side, and the reverse is plain blue. The first page was cut into 6 equal pieces, and I arranged them so that 2 matching pages always came together. The book is bound very simply, with two holes through the middle of the pages and a contrasting ribbon pulled through it. I have only decorated the plain pages, and still need to find some butterfly sayings to write into it, but here are some of the pictures:

Oh dear, this has turned out much longer than I intended again, sorry! Wish you all a lovely day, take care, and thanks for visiting!