All the Deets on My Christmas Tags

Hello friends!  So glad you stopped back by to check out all the details on my Christmas tag triptych.  I really agonized over what to make for the Stamptember blog hop.  Both of the sister design teams for Simon Says are made up of such incredibly talented designers and I want to make sure my work is up to their level.  So I considered and rejected different options for a week before I finally settled on the tags.  And then when I did get started, I still had a difficult time because I had no real concept going in.  That is not unusual for me.  I actually enjoy sitting down with no preconceived ideas, just some stamps or images and maybe a bit of paper and just seeing where my creativity can take me.  I looked over all the Tim Holtz Christmas tags and saw some techniques that I wanted to play with, but it wasn't until I relaxed and let my own style take over that the project started to take shape.

As promised, I'm going to break down the techniques and share with you some links for more information.  All of the stamps except for the flourish are from the new Tim Holtz Christmas set Mini Holidays 3 or his older set Mini Holidays.  The flourish is from his Fabulous Flourishes set.  I cut tags and thin cardboard backing to match with the Tag and Bookplates die and layered them together so the tags are stiff and will stand up.  I decided to make part of my theme 'December 25' so started with the 25 stamp.  I used one of the bookplates from the die, cut from cardboard/chipboard.  I initially embossed it with Weathered Wood distress embossing powder, but later decided to go with only golds.  I already had the Gold Alcohol Ink Mixative on my desk and had been using it for other things so I just gave the frame a coat of the gold mixative.

The holly leaves were stamped on Very Vanilla and ink distressed with Vintage Photo DI, fussy cut and then green Stickles was applied.  The Merry Christmas was stamped in Ranger Jet Black archival ink onto Kraft Glassine, dried with the heat tool and snipped out to be layered over the holly.  Notice the gold dots in the upper right corner?  I really liked what TH did on his tag (see Day 6/Steps 15 & 16) but I don't have the speckle stamp nor did I have any gold acrylic paint so I improvised.  I found a stamp in my stash that had dots on one side and used that.  For the gold paint, I had some gold dimensional paint and managed to use that.  The holly on Santa's head has Antique Linen distress stickles applied.

For the center tag, I used three main techniques - the etched glass Fragment (see Faux Etching on this post - you have to scroll down a bit), the printer's block letters (see GrungeBlocks) and the shabby chic technique on the tag itself.  I must say, the faux etched glass technique was really fun and cool to do.  And of course, since I introduced black into the color palette, I had to add one of my shabby crinoline flowers.  And, hey, like that snowflake metal piece?  It's new in my Etsy shop.  You can get a pack of just snowflakes or purchase a bigger metal pack with them in it.

On the far right tag, the tag base was covered with a sheet from an old book and then tape was applied and ripped off to remove part of the print (see Day 11, Step 18).  Then it was masked and misted with the Vintage Photo/Perfect Pearls (that I often refer to as my homemade glimmer mist).  It's all here in Tim's post.

I used Metal Foil Tape Sheets to cover the GrungeBoard letters.  Check out Day 10 here for the metal technique.  Then I dripped Caramel alcohol ink on the metal and let it run all over it.  I had the brilliant idea of painting the raised letters with the gold mixative, but some of the gold ran off and onto the base.  So I added more Caramel and pretty soon the gold mixative was running all over the base.  I gave up on trying to correct it and decided that I LOVED the way it looked - a happy accident that I couldn't repeat in a million years - LOL.  Then I repeated the same mixing of the caramel alcohol ink and gold mixative on the strip of acrylic that I cut with the On the Edge Snow Flurries die.  I added another faux etched fragment done with the pine cone stamp, some corrugated cardboard stars that I also brushed with the gold mixative.

So them's the dets, folks.  At least for the first three tags.  I'm going to make my own 12 Tags of Christmas this year and I was thinking it would be fun to invite you all to play along.  But I'm not going to do them in 12 straight days running like Tim does.  I'm going to do one per week and if you would like to play along, you can upload your project using the linky that I'll provide.  Please use my tag of the week as your inspiration.  You don't have to make a tag.  You can make a tag, a card, an ATC or any other paper craft project that will help you prepare for Christmas.  We'll get started next Wednesday, after the blog hop is over.  If you don't have a blog, you can use another hosting site such as SplitCoast Stampers.  You can play along at any time up through December 1st and at the end we'll have a drawing for a random prize.  Hope you'll want to join in the fun!