I Meant To Behave But There Were Too Many Other Options – Stamptember Tag

Hi friends!

Hope your week is going well?  Do you remember the plums from my last post, well I defrosted some pastry today and I went out to the garden to pick the plums, with the idea of making a pie or tart, and all the plums were shriveled up and dead!!!  I can only put it down to the cold temperatures we have had over the last two days, this morning was only 2C !!! So no plums for me and no tart 🙁  I was so disappointed.  Now I will have to work out what to do with this defrosted pastry!  BTW still on crutches in case you were wondering!  I must have the slowest healing ever, as this has been seven months to the day today!

Today’s art . . .

Anyway, today I made a tag with a couple of challenges in mind – see end of post for all the details!

This was going to be a quick, wham bam, here’s a tag tag, but then I started thinking, always dangerous, and playing around with things on my table, and….  I had this yellow tag leftover from August when I was making a lot of birthday cards and this was going to go on one of those cards, but then I had to go in a different direction and it no longer fit, so it’s been sitting on my table for a few weeks just begging to be useful.  So then I saw last week that the current challenge on TIOT was to “make it colourful” and thought what is more colourful than bright yellow, right?  Then I saw that the challenge on Tag Tuesday was “back to school” and I wondered if I could use my tag and somehow make it back to school related.  That stumped me for a while but then remembered how many Tim Holtz paper dolls are children and there had to be one in a school uniform or carrying a school bag – no to both of those apparently.

But I had in my mind that it would have a naughty child on it, maybe someone bunking off school, and I was thinking about things he might say like for example “I meant to behave but there were too many other options”, and that got me thinking about this week’s stamping challenge over on SSS Monday Challenge.  My tag already had background stamping on it but I decided to add a few more options, and it was definitely starting to come together, with a hint of Halloween about it.  I have a box of 200 pencils, don’t ask, but hey if you need a pencil, you know who to ask!  So I took four of them and cut them down to size for my tag, to act as a fence for the boy to lean against and also pencils are my back to school element.  Remember that line from You’ve Got Mail about bouquets of sharpened pencils:

Joe Fox: Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies.

I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

Yeah, that’s not this unfortunately, but that’s what I was thinking about when I was thinking about back to school and school supplies, and I did at least tie some twine around my pencils. 🙂

So this kid was supposed to go to school like a good boy but instead, he went off to play hookey in the pumpkin patch and hang out with the spiders and bats.  He also has something very suspicious in that jar that he’s hidden behind the pumpkin but like he said “I meant to behave but there were too many other options”.

To finish off, I splattered Distress Mica stain in Specimen and Fallen Acorn on the background – I tried to show the shine in the above photo.  Other things added to the tag include part of a diecut doily and some clock face paper that were on my table, and I gave him a piece of wood to stand on – and let’s not forget his little mask so he can remain incognito!

Let me know what you think in the comments below.   As always, thanks for reading and Happy Arting!

Ingredients
distress tag, honeycomb stencil, distress watercolour pencils, black archival, TH stamps:  Snarky Cat Halloween CMS407 and Papillon CMS106, paper dolls, some actual pencils, twine, piece of wood, Sizzix Vault Wicked 666683 (pumpkins), piece of clock face paper, mask from TH Halloween sticker book, diecut doily from Sizzix Vault Boutique 666607, Distress ink Ground Espresso, Sizzix express glue, double sided tape, TH collage medium, Pitt artist pens, Distress Mica Stain Specimen, Fallen Acorn,

Challenges

SSS Monday Challenge – Simon Says Stamp It (Stamptember)
Try it on Tuesday – Make it Colourful
Tag Tuesday – School Days
Creative Artiste Mixed Media – September Challenge #108