Colour Challenge Card

I am taking the day off from making tags, as I wanted to participate in the Less Is More Week 44 challenge, which is a colour challenge. Green.

 

I have these wonderful 6.5" square envelopes and they are perfect for cards that I am going to hand deliver.  This one is for my hubby's upcoming birthday.  The card base is 6" square from folded Bazzill card stock.

 

I stamped the Embossing Arts tree stamp with Tim Holtz' Iced Spruce onto a piece of lightly patterned green paper. A Stampin' Up rub-on for the words and some extra thick foam tape ... and my CAS card is finished.

Thanks for stopping by today!

12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #5

As soon as I saw Tim Holtz' Tag #5 (you can see his HERE), I knew what I wanted to do. I also knew I didn't want to do the whole alcohol resist thing, and I don't have his 'reverse' stamps so I would have had to come up with something different anyhow.

I whipped out this red and white sparkly paper (My Minds Eye) - I'd been hoarding it and it was exactly what I had in my head when I first saw Tim's tag.  Love it when that happens.

 

Because I eliminated all those resist steps, this was a quick and easy tag to make! I followed the rest of Tim's steps though, so my wreath and bow are very similar to his. I didn't have the paint to paint the grungeboard, so instead glued green card stock to chipboard and die cut those. 

Funny, I have had that die for awhile - and bought it for the greenery first and the banner 2nd. Never thought to use it for Christmas!  

 

The white snowflakes on the background paper are embossed and sparkly -- and I added a tiny bit of distress Stickles to the top layer of the wreath. Then, the whole thing was glued to a kraft card stock tag for extra stability.

Thanks for stopping by today!

12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #4

For Tim's Tag #4 (which can be found HERE) he was inspired by the snow that fell in Arizona. I'm thinking - yup - WE had snow fall in the mountains AND in the city. So I was just as inspired. His tag is SO beautiful, I kept mine very similar.

 

Tim used his 'movers and shapers' die tray and the small 25 to cut an aperture from the center bottom of the snowman. I used the 25 from his NOEL die instead, and cut it out of paper covered grungeboard. Actually it was sparkle paper so it is really sparkly.  Really Really Sparkly. :-)  I tapped it with a green ink pad so it tied in a little better.

 

Once again, I cut the tag base twice ... once from patterned paper and once from kraft card stock. The patterned paper (Recollections) was stamped with a Tim Holtz snowflake stamp in Iced Spruce, which was a perfect match for the paper.

This tag involved a lot of steps, so I worked on it a little at a time, letting things dry as needed. The snowman was covered in Tim's Distress crackle paint ... and then inked with Broken China once it dried and cracked. Oh, the snowman itself was cut from paper covered grungeboard as was the snow flake.

As with Tim's tag, I cut the snowflake edge from clear packaging - but I didn't have the white distress paint he used. I liked mine plain (clear) and also refrained from bending the snowflake tips. Flat it is! Like Tim, I love the way the light catches on the clear piece.

 

Instead of the tulle, I tied wool around the snowman's neck - a soft alpaca no less.  :-)  I did add the tulle at the top of the tag though! Along with some more wool. 

The snowflake and hat have Distress Stickles & I added the pearls to the snowman's hat as Tim's tag used ... but not the feather.

This tag looks so much better in real ife. With all the layers and dimension - even though it's far less than Tim's original tag - it just makes me smile.

Thanks for stopping by today!

12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #3

When we got home last night, I booted it right down to the studio so I could catch up with Tim Holtz' 12 Tags Of Christmas.

His Tag #3 had me a little stumped though. I thought about what I wanted to do most of the weekend while cleaning. It helped the cleaning tasks go faster, ha ha.

His tag was done using his large Christmas word collage stamp. Which I don't have.
He made a custom ink pad by stamping the word collage onto Cut & Dry felt using permant ink. Which I don't have.

He stamped his colourful inked words onto his tag and I loved the way he did two at a time. And I liked the look of some of the words being sideways and some being straight up and down. But then he embossed part of his word collage using his coordinating embossing folder.  Which I don't have.

So - I thought I might do a word collage using my (many) Christmas word stamps and emboss each one using a different colour of embossing powder. Good thought, but my green powder clashes with the bright red, and other than gold, silver and rust - I didn't have any other powders.

See Tim's Tag #3 HERE, and this is what I finally came up with. I wish you could see the shimmer and shine in real life - it's SO pretty.

I cut two kraft tags using his tag die then glued them together so it would be nice and thick. I ran the bottom portion through the Big Shot with a Cuttlebug Christmas word embossing folder, and then fiddled around a little to run the top portion through with a Stampin' Up snowflake folder.  LOL - I loved it so much I could have left it as is. But I didn't.  ;-)

 

I swiped the raised areas, with my Versamark ink pad, sprinkled a couple of embossing powders over different areas and heat embossed it. This step I repeated several times with my own custom powder which is a metallic. I didn't worry too much about perfection with the Versamark - thanks Tim.  I didn't worry to much about going outside the lines with that bright red embossing powder - thanks Tim.  I just thoroughly enjoyed the process and am SO pleased with the finished tag.

Tim tied a jingle bell  - which I don't have - to the top of his tag with twine, so I added a K&Co 3-d poinsettia sticker. And I added the twine with Martha Stewart seam binding to the top of the tag.

He used his greenery die - which I don't have - to create a little cluster on the bottom right corner of the tag. So I added (yet another) K&Co 3-d Christmas Sticker. I added silver glitter glue highlights to the poinsettia and cluster, as the metallic embossing powder has a fair bit of silver in it and it really seemed to tie it all together.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Joy Christmas Cards

I would rather be making tags to join in the '12 Tags of Christmas over at the Tim Holtz blog, but the cleaning continues here. Instead I have a couple of quick and easy cards to post - using the same Tim Holtz / Szzix ornament and JOY dies as my December 1st card post. 

 

The paper (My Minds Eye) is sparkly, and cheerful - and it would be easy to make multiples of these cards. Which is a good thing - I haven't started addressing my cards yet, and I may need to make more!

Tomorrow I should be back, playing catch up with the tags. 

Thanks for stopping by today!

12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #2

I am not kidding, when I say that THOUSANDS of people across the globe are waiting each day for Tim Holtz' next tag in his '12 Tags of Christmas'.  There were over 55,000 views within the first 24 hours! This year he has added Inlinkz, which allows people to upload a photo of their tag directly to his site. SOOO fun to see how people interpret his tag and techniques and make it their own. You can see Tim's tag #2 HERE and mine is below:

I love his deer die ... and just happened to have this one already cut from kraft card stock and sitting in my 'Odds & Sods' pile. I added a K&Co 3-d holly/berry sticker instead of a metal star and greenery pipe cleaner, and put some sparkly cut up snowflakes (Martha Stewart Punch) around her neck.

I used a sparkly music printed paper (glued to kraft card stock) instead of his distressed and inked background. I liked that his patterned paper had a Christmas greeting down the right side, so I stamped one (DeNami) on cream card stock, stippled inks  and glued it to the right side of the tag. Glitter glue (2 colours and smeared with my finger) was added along the inked tear line.

I also liked how Tim's Tag #2 had a pine branch in the upper left corner that he inked, so I added one of the K&Co 3-d stickers in the same area.

I used a 'My Favourite Things' die to cut the scalloped border, and added brads as Tim did with his tag. But - I added tiny star brads instead of larger circular ones ... and decided NOT to hammer them with the texture hammer since they are so tiny I didn't want their shape changed by hammering. Also, I didn't want the backs of the brads showing through onto the back of the tag (sorry, Tim) so they were attached to the border only, then the border was attached o the bottom of the tag.

I used a (Stampin' Up) canvas stamp to add the canvas texture to the deer and the word piece ... as I didn't have the sticky-back canvas he used for his deer.

Fibres? I have TONS of them ... from when I used to make tags regularily. So instead of distressing seam binding, I went with some pretty fibres.

I likely won't get into my studio for the next couple of days, as I have lots of drywall dust to vacuum  up. I'll be spending the weekend dusting, vacuuming, washing walls and generally putting things back together. But I will play catch up next week and get right back to these tags.

Thanks for stopping by today!

12 Tags of Christmas - Tag #1

It's that time of year again!

I'm talking about Tim Holtz'  "12 Tags of Christmas" and it started December 1st.

Happiness.  Inspiration.  Being a part of a phenomenon that has taken on a life of it's own. People all over the globe wait with bated breath to see what Mr. Tim Holtz has come up with for his next tag.

It's his way of giving back to his customers and followers, and in turn his tags inspire thousands of people to join in the fun. This year, I'm going to play along.

Here is my first tag:

I'm not in a big 'distressing' phase, so I didn't do all the grunging and texturing and embossing that he does, but I kept the colours similar. Tim says on his blog, that each tag should be a starting point, and to use things we already have instead of going out to buy the supplies to copy his exactly. Unless we want to.  ;-)  You can see his first tag HERE.

I don't have his pine cone die, but I DO have one of his pine cone stamps. As I went to get it I saw my package of K&Co embellishments and thought I'd have a peek in there first. This bird just jumped out at me and I knew I wanted to use it instead of pine cones and greenery.

I punched a snowflake out of blue snowflake paper (K&Co) and glued it to the tag base before attaching the acetate bird embellishment. Then, I added drops of glitter glue to the berries right on the acetate.

I chose not to crumple and distress the seam binding, although it would have looked great. I was just too impatient. 

The tan and blue are Martha Stewart and the beautiful red is Cherry Cobbler by Stampin' Up. I used one of Tim's pins to attach some beads from my stash, and attached a little gold Santa acetate disk to the top of the pin.

 

I do have Tim's NOEL die, and I love it so I was happy to see that he used it on his first tag.  The tag itself is cut using his tag die. I used a glue stick to attach this patterned paper (K&Co) to kraft card stock before cutting the tag out, and did the same with the NOEL so it is nice and sturdy.  I added the red bling (Michaels) on a whim, and I like the pop of colour. Oh, and I did emboss the NOEL with a Sizzix snowflake embossing folder before attaching it to the tag base.

Thanks for stopping by today!