Hello friends! It's finally here...my Ghost Town 2 Tag Book that I made for the Tim Holtz Sizzix Halloween YouTube Live! I know many of you have been waiting for me to share this project. It's a bit of a long post, so grab a cup of your favorite beverage and sit back and enjoy.
To get started I began by selecting a mix of patterned papers from an older Halloween paper pad. If you don't have these papers, please don't freak your freak as Tim would say! Just grab what you have and start mixing and matching. I selected 10 different patterns to create the front and back of 5 tags and die cut them using a tag die. You will see how all these tags play out later on.
Next I picked the five tags that would be the front side and using a mix of stencils, I applied Grave Distress Texture Paste in random spots on each stencil. The stencils I used are listed below in my supply list if you are interested. I then set these to the side to dry.
While they were drying, I die cut all of the Ghost Town 1 and Ghost Town 2 houses from black cardstock. I stamped each house with white pigment ink using a mix of stamps. This created a kind of ghostly look to each house. The stamps I used are listed below in my supply list if you are interested.
I also stamped and fussy cut out a mix of labels to layer with the houses. These are stamped onto Distress Watercolor paper with Black Soot Archival Ink and then ink smooshed into a bit of Old Paper Distress Ink and inked around the edges with some Walnut Stain Distress Ink.
In the photo below the second and fourth tag were my first run when I was making this tag book. Originally, I was going to do different backgrounds on each tag. These actually have Distress Crackle Paste on them and the one was colored over with the Distress Crayon. I didn't like how it looked, so I ended up redoing them to all have a similar look.
To give each house the look of ghostly lights shining through the windows, I backed them with gold metallic kraftstock. There are various ways you could do this, but I die cut the house from the gold paper, and while it was still in the die, I applied adhesive tape (you could also use washi tape) to the backside to hold the small pieces in place. I then adhered this to the backside of the black die cuts. To grunge them up a bit, I rubbed some Black Soot Distress Crayon around the window openings.
Another layer of interest I added were some die cut Decor Frames. After I die cut them, I used the 3D Lumber Texture Fade embossing folder to emboss them. These are cut from Distress Watercolor paper and inked with Walnut Stain Distress Ink.
Once again, I grunged them up with a bit of Black Soot Distress Crayon.
A final addition to the tags was a few black die cut florals that were then layered into the frames. Now that each tag was completed, I was ready to start assembling the tag book.
I placed the tags next to each other and used Tim Holtz Fabric Tape to hold the tags together. Make sure to leave a very slight (like the thickness of the tag) between each tag so that when you fold the book each page folds nice and flat.
Because I didn't want the backside to be "ugly", I adhered those extra tags I cut out in the beginning to the backside of each tag.
To create the closure for the tag book, I used seam binding that was dyed with Black Soot Distress Spray. I cut a length long enough to wrap around the book once it was closed and create a nice bow when tied. The only spot I attached the ribbon to was the first tag, so that it stayed with the book when it was opened.
One last final detail is the machine stitching that I added to each tag. I did this at the very end once the entire book was assembled.
Now that you know how I created this tag book, here are some more detailed images of each page for your inspiration and enjoyment.
This is a look at the cover.
Here is a look at the second and third pages on the inside.
These are the fourth and fifth pages.
A look at the entire tag book when it is open.
This is what the backside looks like.
I hope you enjoyed this long detailed blog post about my Ghost Town 2 Tag Book and that it inspires you to create your own version of this. For more tag book inspiration you can check out my Field Notes Tag Book.
Supplies
You can find the products I used to create these projects along with compensated affiliate links to Scrapbook.com and Sizzix. These links are at absolutely no extra cost to you. If you want to learn more about what an affiliate link is, you can see my full affiliate and product disclosure statement here.
