Be Fearless Tag: Idea-ology Rub Ons.

I made a total of 5 tags using the rub on technique Tim Holtz used on his May 12 Tags of 2013.  As I mentioned before, Tim's rub ons are awesome.  I'm a rub on junkie and I know that it stems from the fact that I can't draw.  Not being able to draw led me to rubber stamping and while I love rubber stamps, I also love the look of a rub on.  Rub ons give me detailed images with crisp lines that just can't be acheived in a rubber stamp.  Mixed media is all about the texture and using rub ons along with rubber stamp images give my work the depth that is lacking from simply sticking to one medium.

While it is true that I've never met a rub on I didn't like, it is also true that all rub ons are not created equal and I love some more than others.  Some rub ons are flimsy and some rub ons are strong and thick...and some are just right (I just gave myself a Goldilocks and the 3 Bears feel there).  Flimsy rub ons are difficult to remove form the backing paper without ripping them to shreds and while sometimes I intend to only put down a partial design, flimsy rub ons make it hard to control how much or what part of the design ends up on the tag.  I also find that sometimes flimsy rub ons end up coming off-or partially coming off- on the silicon release paper.  This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.

Tim's new rub ons are high-quality, have some stickiness to them which makes it easy to rub them exactly where I want them, and are easy to remove from the backing paper.  In fact they are so well-made and thick that I found it hard to put down a partial design.  I found if I cut the design apart first I had better results.  I also found it impossible to rub on the desired design directly from the entire sheet (as Tim shows himself doing in his step-out tutorial) because the other rub ons on the sheet would end up sticking to my work.  This is a downfall of sticky, thick images.  I finally ended up cutting out each design before I began to rub it on.  My favorite brands of rub ons: Basic Grey, Idea-ology, Hambly, and Kaisercraft.

Toss a Handful of Glitter in the Air.