The Artful Maven: Stamper’s Anonymous Curations Summer 2026: Happy 250th Birthday USA

Saturday, June 27, 2026

Stamper’s Anonymous Curations Summer 2026: Happy 250th Birthday USA

Hello All! First, let me give you a big thank you for all the warm comments and messages from last weeks post and my long absence! My cup runneth over. Today, I have the second project shown in the Stamper's Anonymous Curations Summer/Travel YouTube Live featuring the stamps and stencils from Tim Holtz, the patriotic 250th Birthday Thickboard Tag. I used the Retro Carnival Components Stamp as my inspiration for this, and had a lot of fun creating it. I think it would look awesome in a wreath. Enjoy!

Using the Retro Carnival Components Stamp as my inspiration, I gathered the larger stamped images from the Psychedelic Grunge stamp set and kind of planned it out. Using Picket Fence Distress Paint from Ranger, I painted over the Mini Tag size thick board and tag hole.

Once dry, I started from the bottom working up and started stamping. I cut the numbers for the years from the Mixed Media 118 set and added them to a stamping block, then stamped them in Black Soot Archival. I cut one star from the row or stars and stamped it in the middle of the years with Barn Door Archival. (FYI...I ended up needing masks for pretty much every stamp from here on out for the bursts part, so I used sticky note to make them.)

Taking the circle star from Psychedelic, I stamped it in Prize Ribbon Archival and made a mask. Then taking the bullseye from the MM122 set, I stamped it using Barn Door Distress Archival Ink over the mask so the star would be in the middle, all on the bottom right.

I stamped the 'how old' and arrow in Prize Ribbon Archival. Then taking the number stencil, I inked in the numbers 2 and 5 with Barn Door.

Taking the star from Psychedelic, I stamped it in Barn Door and masked it. Then using the stencil with the arrows, I chose the firework rocket looking one and over the masked star I inked it in with Prize Ribbon Archival in the middle of the tag.

I took the mini star stencil from Set 38 and inked in some below the firework in Barn Door. Then using the Alphabet Stamps I cut off the U, the S, the A, and stamped those on the firework and star using Glacier White Pigment Ink, stamping them several times to be nice and white.

I added the circles from Psychedelic to a stamping platform and stamped them along the right side, alternating colors and using sticky notes to mask off the parts I didn't want to be inked using both the Barn Door and Prize Ribbon. I stamped the star circle above in Barn Door, and stamped it again on the hole part in Prize Ribbon. Then I stamped the whole circle image again on sticky note for masking in the next step.

I cut out the masked sticky notes and placed them on the top portion of images. Then I took the Rays Layering Stencil and Glacier White Pigment Ink and inked in the Rays with a Mini Ink Blending Tool. I did the same to the bottom. The ink covered up some parts I didn't want covered up, but I just reinked those parts.

Using the Dot Matrix portion of a stencil I inked in the open areas of the rest of the tag with Faded Jeans Archival. I painted the edges of the whole tag with Black Soot Distress Paint bringing it up over the edges for a distressed look like on the Components Stamp, as well as the hole. Then I adhered the hole onto the tag with Collage Medium.

Using a black permanent fine pen, I outlined every single thing on the tag. I used a white gel pen to color in a few portions that needed more white. Then using 4 colors of Stickles I went nuts with the glitz. Once dry, I wrapped twine around my hand several times, tied a knot in the middle and tied it onto the hole.