Compendium of Curiosities #25

For Linda's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge, the technique chosen is Scribble Stain Distress. When I tried this technique with multiple colors, my result looked muddy, so I stayed monochromatic and used several blue distress inks. I embellished my skinny tag with snowflakes and a Happy New Year greeting from one of my French Kissed postcards.

The 12 Days of Christmas swap

I received my matchboxes from the 12 Days of Christmas swap just in time for the start of the 12 days and thought I'd share them. Isn't it amazing how you can embellish a simple matchbox? This swap was organized by my friend Penny in the UK (you can see her blog HERE) and the participants included not just the two Pennys who live across the pond from each other, but others in the UK, New Zealand and even Russia! Lots of thanks to Lorraine, Janet, Jo, Lisa, Jan, Kimmie, Julia, Hope, Linda, Pat, and of course to UK Penny :-)

Tag Tuesday - Silver or Gold

Even though it's the day AFTER Christmas, I'm posting my Tag Tuesday submission which is a Christmas themed tag using silver or gold. You can tell that mine is all in gold - embossed gold metal, gold Dresden trim, gold StazOn stamped text, gold crackle paint - ok, it's actually bronze with a gold Krylon pen over the top to brighten it - hey that's even more gold, right?, a rosette made from gold swirl paper, and gold star garland at the top - whew! Hope your Christmas was merry, happy or JOYEUX! Stamp: Oxford Impressions

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!!!

I wanted to share with you my Christmas card using the little angel stamp from the newest Oxford Impressions Christmas stamps. I like using lines from Christmas carols in my cards; do you know this one?

Two days ago we had rain that melted our last little bits of snow, and I was becoming sad that we would have a green Christmas, (OK, really it would be a brown Christmas - isn't that reason enough to be sad on Christmas?) and then it snowed overnight and I woke up to this yesterday morning:

Isn't that just so much more like Christmas? The second picture is my drive in to work - I love it when it looks like this!! And no, I was not driving in adverse weather conditions taking photos while driving - I made my husband drive. One of the many perks of working together :-)

Gingersnap Creations: Snow, Pine and Mahogany

It's time again for the Color Challenge at Gingersnap Creations. This month the challenge colors are snow, pine and mahogany - a very Christmas-y combination don't you think? For my piece I started by stamping snowflakes with Versamark onto watercolour paper and then clear embossed them. Then I applied distress inks in pine needles, aged mahogany and some peeled paint and fired brick for color depth directly to my stamp, spritzed with a good amount of water, and stamped over my snowflakes. Just wipe the distress ink off the embossed snowflakes and you have this terrific background! There's plenty of time to join in on the challenge - it runs until Jan.23rd.

Stamp credits: Hero Arts and All Night Media

The 12 Tags of Christmas completed!!!

The final two tags - Days 11 and 12 - for the 12 Tags of Christmas. Both of these had diecuts as such a prominent part and I don't have them to use, so I hand cut them using a hand drawn pattern and scissors. And yes, I even cut out "joy" using an x-acto! (a new, sharp blade worked really well). Aside from posting a picture of my final tags for this year, I also really wanted to share a fun book I made to keep them all in. I used 7 Gypsies bookboard covers and created folded pocket pages to the size I needed and tucked a tag into each pocket. The tags are so dimensional that the book pretty much explodes rather than closing, but I still like the look of it.


Here's a picture of how the inside looks. I'm not sure if I'll embellish the pocket pages or not, maybe just put the numbers 1-12 on them or something like that. I like the look of it with all the ribbons sticking out the top - actually, that's the favorite part of my cats, too and I have to make sure I keep the book away from them!

Compendium of Curiosities #24

I've been making a lot of Christmas cards and gift holders this time of year - I suppose many others are, too :-) so for the latest Compendium of Curiosities Challenge I chose a Christmas theme to go along with the challenge technique to use Rock Candy Distress Stickles. I used them on my patterned paper collage and on the gold painted chipboard swirl. As glittery things are so hard to photograph, I've added a close-up photo also.

Stamps: Stampers Anonymous - flourish, Oxford Impressions - sentiment, Inkadinkado - snowflake border

12 Tags of Christmas days 9 and 10

Ahhhh.......a day off from work and Tim Holtz has posted (slightly) quicker to do tags! Here are mine for days 9 and 10. The paper rosette was fun to make. And I stamped lines of music not only onto the tag, but also onto the paper for the rosette and a pearl button. I even added jingle bells to the top so the entire tag is musical! With the day 10 tag it was great to be able to use packaging as a clear tag - I knew I was holding onto that packaging for some reason; there had to be something you could do with it!

The 12 Tags of Christmas days 6,7 and 8

I've been keeping up with the 12 Tags of Christmas, but get to do them in the evenings, so I have to wait until daylight to take a picture! Here are the next three for days 6, 7, and 8. For day 6, I didn't have much that he used - no tall trees texture fade, but I had the stamp version, so I embossed them onto the tag to give a little more dimension. Also didn't have the die to cut the reindeer, but did have one left from an old package of seasonal grungeboard die cuts that worked nicely. Now for day 7, though, I was able to do all of that one with the specified supplies and love that one! His idea to create the poinsettia with sticky back canvas and grungepaper is great, and the wood grain textured tag I also really love. Back to day 8 and more improvising is needed. I didn't have a mask to use, but was able to cut a reindeer one using a Slice and Frisket film - it worked really well. I had both the negative and the positive to use, and the film has a repositional adhesive on 1 side to allow for great masking. For my houses, I stamped onto the grungeboard with a Hero Arts stamp of row houses then cut it out and cut a few windows using an x-acto knife. I loved his idea of used curled wire as "smoke" coming from the chimney - a very fun look. Can't believe there are only 4 more days of tags left - the 12 days is definitely going fast.

Gingersnap Creations Spicy Supply Challenge

A new challenge was posted today on the Gingersnap Creations blog and the featured supply in this challenge is white glitter. I wanted to play with the new set of holiday stamps from Oxford Impressions called Sleigh Bells and created a tag background using the snowflake and Joyeux Noel stamps over a wrinkle free distressed tag. The angel was stamped onto glossy cardstock and her wings made sparkly with picket fence distress stickles. I also used frosted lace stickles over the stamped snowflakes for a fun sparkly effect. The tiny tip allowed me to just "draw" over the stamping quite easily.

This close-up gives a slightly better view of all the sparkles. Glittery things are sure hard to photograph!!! This challenge runs until Jan 9th so why not join in and enter your own beautifully sparkly project!

Tags 4 and 5

Here are tags 4 and 5 and as you can see, I had to make a lot of substitutions! I didn't have the paper used in the background for tag 4, so I tried the suggestion for a watercolour snowflake effect from day 2. After stamping the snowflakes with 4-5 colors of DI's, I spritzed the tag with water and let the colors bleed. I also tried it on a watercolour paper tag, but the bleeding just made blobs of color and you lost the ability to tell they were snowflakes. A tip that I can add for the alcohol inked piece (mine is on a 7Gypsies journal jewelery piece); if you adhere the paper onto the back with Diamond Glaze instead of just using Glossy Accents on the very edge of the piece, you can retain all the layers of alcohol ink you've placed and the paper sticks better since it's adhered fully. I learned that Glossy Accents over alcohol ink causes it to bleed and destroy any patterns you created, but Diamond Glaze doesn't react with the alcohol ink. With my day 5 tag, I used a Santa stamp and a holly stamp from Oxford Impressions - Suzanne has the best vintage Christmas stamps to play with. I also found that when I looked through what was left of my metal numbers, I only had a 5 - maybe it would've worked for tag #5 on Dec.5th, but that wasn't the intent with the design, so I found other metal numbers to use. Tim's definitely not kidding when he tells you to WAIT before touching the metal you've just melted UTEE onto (and Distress EP also) - a big OUCH if you don't........not that I would know anything about that :-)

Tim Holtz and the 12 Tags of Christmas

Tim Holtz has once again started his 12 Tags of Christmas and I had such fun playing along last year that I had to do it again! He's done 3 tags so far and here are my versions. You can see his tags on his blog HERE. I think what is really fun about these tags is when you don't have the same things he uses and have to come up with something from your stash to give a similar feel. It can be a true exercise in creativity! If you're also playing along, I'd love to know about it to be able to visit your blog and see your take on his tags.

Art Creations Friday

This beautiful picture is from Art Creations Friday for this week's challenge. I had fun creating a collage on a 7 Gypsies book board piece using lace and Glimmer Mists.