Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge #12 - Distressed Photo TInting

Page 41, "Distress Photo Tinting" is the subject of challenge #12 from the Tim Holtz Book, Compendium of Curiosities 3! This challenge is being hosted by Linda Ledbetter at her blog Studio L3 and sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique.  A requirement of this challenge is to use the technique as described on the book, and, of course, to not reveal the technique (You should buy the book yourself if you are interested... it's worth every penny and Tim Holtz will even autograph it for you!).

Again, I have a back story for this challenge. Deep in the archives in our basement (that's a nice way to describe the chaos of stuff stored down there!) there is a photo album in progress that I started with old pictures of my family. Amng them is this photo of my maternal grandfather, PopPop (AKA WIlliam Edward Johnes) in his color sergeant uniform from the Spanish American War. At the time of this photo, he was approximately 22 years old:

Except for a very dodgy photocopy of an undated newspaper article about him, this is the only photograph I have of him. I never knew him as the vigorous young man he was in this picture: he had suffered from several massive strokes before I was born and I knew him only as a very stooped man who couldn't speak well and needed assistance to walk. But, according to the newspaper article, he was a master carpenter who worked on several major buildings in the area where he lived (a courthouse and a Christian Science Church among others), a volunteer fireman (a service he passed down to his grandson and great grandson as well), a member of the First Baptist Church (a real surprise as that side of the family, as far as I knew, was Methodist!), and a member of the American Eagle and the Zimmy Cycle Club (these were racing bicycles built in PopPop's home town, and as tall as PopPop was - well over 6 feet - I can't picture him on a racing bike, but...)! He was, when he died, the last of the Spanish American War veterans in the State of New Jersey (or so goes family legend). He had five children, four of whom survived him, and my Mother was his youngest! She resembled him quite a bit, in fact...

I had my husband copy the photo and print it onto photo paper and I tinted as per the instructions in Compendium of Curiosities 3, after researching Spanish American War uniforms to find the correct color (I settled on blending the closest distress inks I could find to "Cavalry Yellow" for the trim and opted to not try to put Army Blue over the dark jacket.).

I mounted the tinted photo on a fussy cut abstract flag, backed both with some navy cardstock, added some industrial numbers to indicate the date and a charm to represent what he meant to me, and then mounted the full assemblage to a lighter blue tag:

I stamped a sentiment on beige cardstock using Black Soot Distress Ink, fussy cut it and attached it to the tag using foam squares:

Finally, I attached a saying using Army Blue raffia and a foam square to hold it steady (I find raffia a little twisty!):

What resulted is perhaps a bit plain for the "Distressed" genre but I think it portrays what my PopPop meant to his family: