Loving Tim Holtz

I can't believe I have never dedicated a whole post to Tim before. He's creative, inspiring, the creator of some of best products on the market, and he's adorable.
  I have been a fan of Ranger since I first started scrapbooking 16 years ago. When Tim joined their team it was the perfect marriage. Not only did he open up and expand the world color and textures to the most basic crafter but the spin he put on vintage art is still thrilling the scrapbooking community to this day.
I could gush endlessly about Tim. But who wants that? So I will keep it short and sweet.  When he began doing the 12 tags of Christmas I was ecstatic. I tried keeping up with  them  and playing with the techniques but never shared my work. When he switched over to the monthly format it made me a little sad because I loved the Christmas theme but I also found the joy of  having a different idea/concept to look forward to every month, like gifts from Tim. It gave me a chance to play around with my materials more and to incorporate the ideas into whatever medium  i happened to be working with at the time instead of attacking the techniques without a plan.   I'm pretty sure this was his plan all along because it also gave me the chance to go out and shop for  products at my local scrapbooking stores as opposed to throwing my hands up because I didn't have what I needed right in front of me. And that was happening a lot when it was the 12 tags of Christmas. If I didn't have the stamps or the embossing powder then I would skip over the tag lying to myself about trying it later but really how often do we go back to something if it's not right in front of us especially when we're in creative mode. So the monthly tags have increased my stash (not something that I really needed) and it also increased my creativity and has allowed me to grow even more smitten with Tim Holtz.
So this last tag in November with the layered leaf was gorgeous but I didn't have the die. I had managed to get the butterfly months earlier from my local Joanns. The butterfly represents change and there were a lot of changes in Nov. for me and my family. The biggest was losing a friend/Sister to cancer. Not that I needed the reminder about how short our time here is or about how precious each moment truly is. But I think the message sometimes gets lost or pushed to the back so I made a little reminder, mainly for my daughter but also for myself- Our choices define US! And thanks to Tims November techniques I made it pretty, thanks Tim