I'm Ready for Diminutive Vessels

It's almost here........the 2011 planetpatchwork.com New Year's Day mystery quilt. I've chosen my color palette and done my cutting. Now, to wait for Saturday morning when the fun begins.

Scribbled & Stained Vines

These are for a swap I'm hosting at paperartistsonline and this month's theme is vines or leaves. I got a couple of TH dies for Christmas and decided to use the flourish as my vine and then did some punch art leaves and strawberries. I thought they looked just scrumptious on the backgrounds I had done for this week's Compendium of Curiosities Challenge over at Studio L3 so I combined the two. Cool, huh? I used Stormy Skies, Peeled Paint and Forest Moss distress inks, some handmade green paper for the vines and scraps for my punch art. Bazzill ocean paper for the card base.

Happy Holidays!!!

A safe and happy holiday season to all!!

On the Twelfth Day of........

and I finally got it done!!! Whew!! I was afraid I wasn't going to make it before the end of the year. Boy did the time sneak up on me. Had to put my last tag on hold so I could get the baking done and packages shipped off on time, and finally got a little time last night to finish up my tags. Made a few substitutions, but it follows Tim's steps for the most part. The background collage are cutouts from K&Company holiday papers; the calendar is from Club Scrap's Academy kit; I hand cut the ornament and embossed some metal letters with gold EP.

On the Eleventh Day of.......

only one to go........Well I started off drawing my own tree on grungeboard, then realized that I'd done a mirror image and then saw that my dictionary page had a cool picture on that side anyway so a mirror image was going to work well and then I went and did my border on the WRONG side. Arrrrrrrrrggggggggg! Oh well, I like how it turned out anyway. Used a Written Word (from Club Scrap) plastic word instead of a stamp and some rafia instead of jute.

On the Tenth Day of..........

.....and I have caught up! Yeah!!!! I used the original holiday grunge snowman cut out of swirl grunge and the cracked glass embossing folder as I don't have a snowflake one. And just by chance I seem to have used a piece of plastic that got that frosty look. Cool, huh?

On the Ninth Day of.......

still trying to catch up........Day 9 is soooooo elegant. I love the rich golden colors of this one. I had to pleat my own flower; went through the button stash; found some gold and red netting and epoxy letters. Also made a couple of baubles from broken necklaces.

On the Eighth Day of.......

and I am catching up. My LSS did not have any of the holiday masks, but they did have the film for making your own so I thought I'd give it a bash. I'm not as happy with it as I'd like, but not bad for a first try at cutting my own. I'm much happier with my hand cut houses. LSS didn't have the die for that either :(. I'm definitely going to give that cute little lamp a try too. I've got one more to go to catch up for the day. Don't know if I'll finish tonight, but going to get started.

On the Seventh Day of....

and I'm behind again. Isn't it amazing as we get closer and closer to the end, the tags get more and more elaborate and time to do them shrinks smaller and smaller. Oh well, part of the chaotic merriment, I guess. Here is my day 7. I found some sticky back canvas and hand cut my petals and leaves. Used a fragment for my charm and a dimensional sticker for my bird. Otherwise, it's pretty close to the original Tim Tag.

On the Sixth Day of.........

Well, we're at the halfway point. The 12 Tags always goes way too fast. I don't have any of Tim's dies and I have a little Sidekick so not much to go with there. I cut out my reindeer from swirly grungeboard and used the embossed swirls as my raised effect. Embossed the Great Outdoors JR tree, which is my FAV!! with dark avocado embossing powder, then colored with the Forest Moss distress ink. I did acquire some tissue tape the other day and gotta say, LOVE IT!! I also used the greeting stamp from Club Scrap's Reflections kit and that beautiful swirl from Ivory Elegance.

On the Fifth Day of.......

I know, I know.....it's day 6 and I'm behind. I actually got my day 5 99% done last night, but it needed to dry overnight. This tag had so many wonderful layers to it and I had most of the elements or a good substitution. My Santa stamp is by Inkadinkado, the holly stamp is from Club Scrap's Evergreen kit. I had a nice chipboard book plate to grunge up and even some metal letters, although I just used white embossing powder instead of the paint and UTEE.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Way back in June we started tearing apart our bedroom to get ready for paint and new flooring. I'm happy to say that the floor is in. Whoo Hoo!!!!!! We made the big push over the Thanksgiving holiday and layed all the tile; Roger finished up the moulding today and we got new slats for the vertical blinds (the Arizona sun was not kind to the one's we had). We also found a really gorgeous piece of redwood to mount over the window. We have another one to go over the slider......but that's tomorrow's job.

On the Fourth Day of....

I thought this one was going to be easy peasy, but I couldn't for the life of me get that AI technique to work on my fragment. Gave up and just left the snowflakes black. Dug up lots of bling from the stash and I'm happy with the result.

On the third day of.........

I really enjoyed making this tag. After I located a birdstamp I was off to the races. I had no tissue tape so I decopaged some sheet music onto my grungeboard, then stamped the bird with staz-on and cut him out. I used cranberry, red pepper and raisin alcohol inks to color the bird. My branch is a Stampscapes stamp. I created my own little collage with some very old stickers. My tissue tape flower is really masking tape that I stamped script on with stazon and then made the flower just like Tim showed us. The birds nest is some olive colored fluffy fiber hot glued on and the background script and snow are both done with Club Scrap stamps--the script is Earth and Herbs and the snow is both Winter Wonderland and Friendship stamps. Looking forward to day 4 tomorrow.

On the Second Day of........

Ahhhhhh......day 2 of the 12 Tags of Christmas. I went a whole different color scheme with this one so hop on over to Tim's blog if you want to see the inspiration. I actually made 3 tags today. I started with the reindeer one and then decided that stamp wasn't bold enough so I dug out my holly leaf and berry stamps. I didn't have any cut 'n dry felt so just had to wing it. The deer is from ClearStamps; the holly and berry are JRL Designs; the swirls and Peace on Earth are Club Scrap Ivory Elegance and Evergreen kits. I used Peeled Paint, Pine Needles, Fired Brick, Aged Mahogany, Victorian Velvet, Frayed Burlap and Walnut Stain distress inks. The little gold charms have been in my stash a very, long time and I have no idea where they are from.

On The First Day of........

It's that time again. For those of you who follow Tim Holtz and his 12 Tags of Christmas you know exactly what I'm talking about. Today is day 1 and it has quite the tag for the big kick off. I had to improvise a little since I don't have dies or a die-cutter, but I do have alot of grungeboard, so I made do with tracing and doing a bit of freehand cutting to get my house and picket fence. And for my tree, I used the tan twisties from Club Scrap's Friendship kit. I just love the fun art Tim creates for these 12 days. Just click on the Tim Holtz link to the right if you want to go check out this year and previous year's tags. The fun has begun!