/* */ Beulah Bee: Lina Cavalieri

June 22, 2018

Lina Cavalieri

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Someday I should start saving all my tag experiments gone bad so that you can see how this format is really meant to be my chance to try new things and to learn from my mistakes.

Occasionally, I get it right (in my mind, anyway) and those are the tags I blog about. This one, in particular, is a good example of what I'm talking about.


I wanted to try a variation of this Tim Holtz technique using a new stamp called Beautiful Flowers by Simon Says Stamp. It's a process of embossing, painting in the areas with acrylics, and then wiping the lines clean.

The paint I used was initially transparent so variations in flower color are due to the background (an image transfer over a book page) showing through. I applied another layer of a more opaque color on the flowers near the top to achieve more uniformity.

It was easy to lift paint off the embossed areas even after the paint was dry and I'll definitely try this technique again.


I thought the play of text and page margin under the face would be interesting but it was too severe so I applied a strip of Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap along the edge to soften the contrast.

To balance out the bottom I added text with texture paste and a homemade stencil. The paste was white. I've learned from experience that it's almost impossible to tint the paste black before you apply it because the best you can expect is maybe a dark gray.


So I took a teeny-tiny paintbrush dipped in black ink and painted the texture paste after it had dried. I've never tried tinting the paste with ink instead of paint so maybe I'll give that a go on a future tag. I also wonder if there's a black texture medium that you can buy?