The 12 Tags of Christmas, Day 1

I admit it...I'm a complete dork when it comes to Tim.  I was sound asleep on the couch, the TV watching me, and at 3am on the dot I awoke without an alarm clock or any disturbances outside my door.  Why?  Because that's when Tim would be posting the first tag in his annual 12 Tags of Christmas event.

What can I say?  I love that man's style and techniques, and look forward to this event all year long.
Tim started off with a bang.  He used A LOT of techniques and materials in this tag.  Click HERE to go to his blog to see what he created......fantastic!

I am determined not to just copy Tim this year, even if I have every item he uses.  Well, not a problem today, as I do not own his Rickety House die.  I always thought of it as a Halloween embellishment, and that isn't my favorite holiday.  Boy, was I ever wrong.  Tim shows how he uses it for Christmas, and even for a beachy, summery piece.  The man is a creative superstar!

And I should mention now.....I did not one, but two tags.  Some of the crafty folks at Everything Wendy Vecchi decided that they'd make tags this year using Wendy's stamps and/or in Wendy's style.  I decided I'd try to do tags each day both ways.  Pretty ambitious, but hey, I'm retired, what else is so pressing that I can't devote an entire day to making tags?

Well, I think 5 paragraphs without one picture is more than enough, so here is my Tim-inspired tag:



Tim's focal point was the rickety house, and he put his fence in front of it.  I kind of combined the two, and instead of having the house as the main image, I went with trees.  The houses on the bottom (the Townscape die) take the place of the fence. (And I did manage to find some mica chips in my stash for the windows).

The pine trees were made by running the entire tag (after it was colored with various blue inks) through the Tall Pines embossing folder.  Tim has a die of the bare branch tree (I don't....yet), but I do have the embossing folder.  So I used it on a piece of grungepaper, inked it, and cut it out.  (The die would be MUCH easier).

I did use Tim's technique for creating the snow.  I don't have sparkly fluff, so I just mixed some plain white fluff with glitter.

The very tiny wreath was made from some moss which I shredded and glued on a really tiny circle.  I'm grateful I have the Ranger scrubbie, because my fingers were just a giant mess of ink, paint, and glue.

While that tag was drying, I got to work on my Wendy-inspired one. 

The background on this one is pretty much the same as on the first.  Instead of snowflakes, I stamped some trees.  Here's how I made the houses:   the first one was pieced together from bits of grungeboard and chipboard.  The roof was "shingled" with little rectangles of inked manila paper.  The house itself was run through the Notebook embossing folder, first in one direction, then the other, just for some texture.

The next house is part of a stamp from Wendy's "Homemade Art" set .  It was inked with mustard seed and then overstamped with one of her background stamps.  I added the chipboard piece on top of the roof, and used a marker to ink in a door.

The last house is just pieced together from bits of grungeboard.  A rectangle was embossed with the Bricked folder, then inked with aged mahogony, black soot, and vintage photo.  The roof is a triangle, inked with rusty hinge, then stamped with another of Wendy's background stamps (in black archival ink).

I changed the way I did the snow.  For no particular reason...just to experiment.  I created it with white enamel accents, and while it was still wet, sprinkled it with white glitter.

The little pine cones and berries are left over from the stash of miniatures I bought to make Christmas configurations.  The sentiment is a stamp from "Homemade Art."

I don't know if I'll be able to do two tags each day, but I'm sure gonna try.   Are you following along with Tim this year?