12 Tags of Christmas, day 12

I'm gutted that today is the last day of Tim Holtz 12 tags of Christmas, will have to start on last years 12 tags tomorrow otherwise I might not want to get out of bed.


As with previous tags I've had to heavily improvise. I drew the bauble in psp and cut with scal. Triple embossed with some really old red twinkle ep. Twisted wire handle and old olive taffeta ribbon.

SU dsp, heavily distressed and inked with old paper, vintage photo and walnut stain. Same colours applied to an Anitas calender page.

Tims tag used a couple of small pinecones, I braved a wander to the local shopping centre via the park but couldnt find any, not even on a cheap ornament. I ended up breaking a piece of prickly hawthorny type something or other (can't you tell I'm not a gardener lol) and rubbed in some stickles.

FAO Mary

Mary you didnt leave an email for me to get back to you :o(

I use a cricut expressions soley with SureCutsALot. It's stupidly easy to use, just a few clicks and you can be cutting any jpg, svg, font & dingbat as well as shadow, black out, blackout shadow and weld them.

If I'm using a manual diecutter I use a wizard, with hindsight I'd have bought a bigshot as the wizard isnt the easiest of machines to use with chunky dies. For the little I use it it does me though.

12 tags of Christmas, day 11

Can't believe that it's the last but 1 tag. I've thoroughly enjoyed Tims 12 tags challenge and am dreading getting up on Monday knowing that there's nowt to do bar try to find my missing mojo.

As with all of the previous tags I've had to heavily improvise.

Stormy sky, aged wood, faded jeans, crushed olive, forest moss, shabby shutters, chipped saphire, dusty concord & walnut stain inks.

Tree and bookplate cut with scal & cricut. Both triple embossed. White puffy wow powder added to tree, silver & pepper to bookplate.

Hero arts (?) snowflake flourish ep'd in clear on SU designer paper, SU linen thread and scrap of retired paper under fragment. SU old olive taffeta ribbon distressed with inks then heated to crinkle.

Butterfly kisses sentiment. Old necklace sacrificied to hide that I'd put the tree too high up the tag lol.

12 tags of Christmas, day 10

Todays tag was really quick and easy to make although a total pig to photo.

stormy sky, faded jeans, walnut stain & pumice stone distress inks.

Butterfly kisses sentiment, black SU ep, acetate, cuttlebug folder,

scal'd snowman, snowcap paint dauber, some pearls & fixings, ribbon shrivelled with heat gun.

Only 2 days left, going to be awful getting out of bed not having that anticipation for when the new tag is posted at 8am. Looking on the positive though.. at least I'll be getting dressed while it's still am and the brekkie dishes might be put in the dishwasher before the lunch plates lol.

12 tags of Christmas day 9

I absolutely adored day 9s tag from Tim Holtz. If anything, elegant is the look I prefer and his tag fit the bill for me.

My attempt not so good lol but I still like it.

Warm honey, walnut stain & brushed corduroy distress inks. I prolly over dosed with Perfect gold perfect medium but at least it's really glittery!!

SU map ds paper & scallop edge punch for rosette. Dim4th music background, brass charm which I added foil to the centre and heavily embossed with a large ball tool. Misc brass flowers pinched from cheap brads, glass rainbow drops. Letters cut with scal (boister black font) covered with SU glaze. Tinsel pinched from daughters OTT xmassy decorate room, had to give it a drastic haircut tho lol.

It does need some doodahs on the ribbon but I'm too tight to buy Tims let alone use them. So seeing as hubby wants me to get some large crystal pendants (for the blind pulls in the front room) I have a really good excuse to pop in to a local bead shop where a few pearls, end caps & pins might just fall off the shelves into my basket. Time to go get dressed then dash off to the bead shop ;o)

12 tags Challenge day 8

I'm only uploading todays tag because it would be a shame to miss out one of a series.

Paper masks just don't work well enough for this challenge, I'll get the proper masks and will redo at some point.

12 tags, day 7

I loathe and detest artificial poinsettias of all descriptions that my heart sank when I saw todays tag.

Surprisingly I enjoyed making it though, think making the faux wood tag had more to do with it than the flower lol.

Photoed at a funny angle to catch the glitter and shine. Fiskars woodgrain texture plate, prima poinsettias, diamond stickles, clear ep, HOTP text border stamp.

SU taffeta ribbon distressed with a burning cigarette. Bead from a cheap kiddies set.

Aged mahogany, fired brick, crushed olive, walnut stain, frayed burlap, vintage photo distress inks. Versafine black.

Flourishes and letters cut with scal & cricut.

12 tags challenge Day 6

Tim Holtz 12 tags of Christmas.

It's the end of the first half today and I should rename myself bodgingpaper lol.

Weathered wood, tumbled glass, forest moss, frayed burlap & walnut stain distress inks.

Reindeer, googled clip art, cut with scal & cricut. Stained crumb cake, painted with mix of pintura blue paint & white frost SU shimmer paint. Embossed with snowflake bug folder, sanded back & tinted with frayed burlap. My long suffering floral decoration is missing yet more twigs as they got sacrificed for the antlers. *polo" shape hand cut and triple embossed with a dodgy old glitter ep.

Trees, my own drawn version of TH embossing folder, cut with scal & cricut.

PTI flourish, retired SU splatter stamp daubed with Champagne shimmer paint.

SU satin ribbon, trimmed at sides and fluffed up with metal owl charm.

The remains from yesterdays SU music note wheel, stamped in black versafine, roughly pleated.

Gawd knows what sentiment stamp that is I've lost the plot lol. Was double stamped with SU real red & cherry cobbler ink.

Tims tags day 4 and 5

Day 5

Wasnt too keen when I saw Tims blog this morning. Nowt much but a bit of distress ink and utee but have to say I enjoyed making this one more than all the others.

Barn door, fired brick, aged mahogany, walnut stain, forest moss, pine needles, pumice stone & frayed burlap inks. Label and numbers cut with scal & cricut on white card. Numbers uteed with clear then a pepper, really heated with the heat gun to create a white ripple through the pepper.

SU music note wheel, katzelkraft holly flourish, Uk craft mag freebie santa & sentiment stamps. Green sparkles glitter glue and white flowersoft. Really shocked as that's twice I've used flowersoft this week... I hate the bloomin stuff as a rule!!



This is day 4s tag and it was a huuuuge challenge as I the only things Tim used that I have are the inks.

I used a victorian image in psp, fiddled with the colour, saturation and added a mask before printing onto 160gsm mondi laser printer paper. Distressed edges with broken china, faded jeans & dusty concord. I have now found that the mondi doesnt really like distress ink and I'll have to chose in future between printing an image on mondi or stamping something on to my favourite annamarie 300gsm white card.

Single gems and shimmer dots were applied freehand and a ticket using a sentiment held on with a mini paperclip from SU.


After several failed experiments I finally managed a faux facet by alchie inking some shrink plastic (pool and purple twilight) then stamping my partridge in a pear tree with white Brilliance ink, heated til shrunk then added lots of utee.

This is my favourite to look at but I hated having to use the computer to make backing paper. I'm def more of a get inky crafter than a pc one.

Tims tags day 3

Not happy with todays tag, the SU bird (stamped with punch pot pourri hostess set then punched) is a wee bit too small but that could just be because the mirielle image used is too large. Will make a ticket later and swap them then see how I feel about the bird.

Tag inked with forest moss, bundled sage & walnut stain, splattered with water before distressing the edges.

Overstamped with SUs En Francais background (hate to say how often I've used this stamp, love it) branch and white splatters from a retired set.

Cherry cobbler 3d flower distressed with walnut. Then a scrunched up wire edged lime green ribbon, was worried about attaching this as it's sooo springy I thought I'd have to staple it but a nice line of my trusty tombow then held the ribbon in place for 5 mins with an acrylic block and it's stuck tight.


Happier with it now.. the "ticket" is a butterfly kisses sentiment and an inkadinkadoo holly stamped in olympia green versafine (like them too much to risk stazon and the inkadink hates anything other than versa) Red tiara sakura berries and added to the edges of the petals. The bird is now warming his bum in a nest of flowersoft. I loathe flowersoft but on this occasion it works.

BTW this pic was taken with my light from the RNIB and the colours are much more true to life even if my triple embossed bird does look a bit manky.

Tims tags, day 2

Most odd, this is another of bloggers weird and wonderful ways of rotating images.. this one was photoed in landscape orientation!!

Much more my sort of look to todays tag from Tim Holtz and using one of my favourite techniques.. diy custom inkpads. I don't have any cutndry felt so used a dried babywipe.

aged mahogany, frayed burlap, chipped saphire, pumice stone, fired brick, walnut stain, crushed velvet distress inks.

Close to cocoa, glorious green reinker, SU pinecone stamp from Autumn Days, docrafts sentiment, katzelcraft swirl, dim4th music sheet, bottle top and papermania metal snowflake.

Now this was a perfect opportunity to try something I've heard about but not tried...

Docrafts clear stamps are one of the worst there is for not liking ink and they bead terribly with distress inks. Now I always used to just sand them back and hope as it wasnt always sucessful, but I had heard that if you ink them up with stazon, leave to dry and never clean off it will take dye inks better. Soooo seeing as I don't know why I bought these sentiments it didnt really matter if I killed them ;o)

Ok, so inked with timber brown stazon, wafted dry with the heat tool from a distance and.. it worked.. took the distress inks really well. I've wiped the excess distress ink off the stamp and will store it for a few weeks to see if there's been any damaged caused and report back. Word of warning... don't use stazon cleaner with clear stamps.. not all clear stamps are the same, some will rot with just one use of the cleaner.

chalk and cheese

Two totally different styles of projects for today.

This is inspired by Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas and just happens to be a challenge I've started over on the docrafts blog.

Sorry Tim, I just havent got the flair let alone half the tools for the layered grungy looks.

House cut with scal from a google clip art, fence and brick mask drawn in psp cut with scal.

Base tag cut with scal, broken china, dusty concord & weathered wood, su snowflake stamps, silver cosmic shimmer mist.

Memory frame, mica tile, katzelcraft stamp & stickles. SU ribbon

House & fence, frayed burlap, walnut stain, white puffy white embossing powder, stickles. And a bit of twig cut pinched from a dried flower arrangement.

All in all makes a dogs dinner lol.

This is definitely more my normal sort of papercrafting.

Inspired by a tealight holder in the current Tilda magazine.

Tealight holder is my own design created in PSP for scal and was cut on white pearl card before being lightly inked with my favourite combo, antique linen, frayed burlap & walnut stain.

Crafty Individuals partridge in a pear tree stamped with brilliance ink on to white laser printer paper. Coloured with copics before being sponged over with antique linen distress ink. Can't say as it liked the brilliance ink very much as it went a bit smudgy around the branches. This was cut close to the edges and mounted onto my tealight holder. Copics used, E00, 21, 35, 43, 45, 47, 53, bg93, g99, r32, 59

I know I've got the tealight lit for the photo but please make sure you use a battery operated tealight. Card & naked flames arent a good idea.

Birthday card

This is for one of my buddies birthdays, she doesnt read my blog so it's safe to post it a few days early.

Layout is from Truly Scrumptious challenge blog and I've combined it with papertake weeklys challenge of Sparkly & Bright and Cute Card Thursdays challenge of using something transparent.





Long recipe list, sorry.

Miss Anya image coloured with copics r32, 35, 59, yr23, 31, e50, 53, b60, c1 & bg72 Promarkers in ivory & blush.

StampinUp supplies, Baja breeze & soft suede cardstock, Elegant Soiree dsp, soft suede ink, early espresso ribbon, boho blossom punch, and the branch from the bird punch.

Nellie Snellen flower punch and embosser duo, craftynotions Rainbow drops and stickles glue in icicle. I used the same stickles for the branch and the daisy, just goes to show how different they look on different backgrounds.

Hope she likes it, those flowers have taken me hours lol.

SU meets Sheena

Real mixup of things for this one.

Layout comes from Friday Sketchers challenge blog.

Main image is from Sheena Douglass and is coloured with various R20 copic shades going up to r27. Edges were scuffed with the SU distressing tool before adding pumice, frayed burlap and walnut stain distress ink. 2 brown shades of copic were sprayed using the spritzer tool from SU. Flourishes from Sheena stamped in versamark before being dusted with a pearl toned pearlex.

Papers by K&Co and dcwv before they were heavily distressed with walnut stain and stamped with en francais background by StampinUp and SU gold ep. To keep with the distressed theme I deliberately only tipped the embossing powder over the middle and on card that was slightly damp. The sentiment is from Sheena Douglass and stamped on Chocolate Chip cs before being punched with one of the new SU punches. Matching choc chip grosgrain ribbon and twine from SU. Shhhh don't tell hubby but the button is the spare from my best coat. Well it had a lovely pearly sheen and with a few splatters from red & brown copics throu the spritzer it just had to be put to paper ;o)

3 kings box

Inspired by Claudias 3 kings favour box in edition 5 of the Magnolia mag this is a fab shaped box and perfect as a gift holder for a small bottle of perfume/ pair of knickers. Having 2 girls and a maybe one day dil to buy for at xmas I can see me making several of these.

Template from scs, (search the download forum for 3 kings) I cheated and converted to scal and cut with the cricut.

Sugar Nellie coloured with copics, b00, bg10,15 y00, 28, yr20, g21, e71 & r27 and promarker ivory & blush.

Basic grey paper, prima flowers, leone em frond punch, cream lace from ribbon box, organza ribbon, copic spica glitter pen and a few gems.

Challenge card

I havent made a Tilda card for months so it was nice to be able to grab the copics and have a go with this one.


The sketch is from Friday Sketchers and the theme of Oriental from Saturday Challenge




Long copic list, sorry. bv02, 13 b00, 02, bg 10, 15, 23, v12, e71, c1,3, 5. Promarker black, ivory & blush. My first attempt at black hair and I'm not very happy with it, the promarker just didnt want to blend nicely with the copics.

Paper is a thin tissue stamped with a very old um in taken with teal and mounted on taken with teal cs. I'm still gutted that SU discontinued this colour but I've got a few packs stashed away safely lol . Ovals were cut with a creative memories system, tag with scal and edged with twt ink before a few ribbons were threaded through. All mounted on a pale variagated card I've had for years. Not colours you'd normally think of for oriental but I wanted them to go with a few mizhuhiki cords I've had for even longer than I can think. The knot was looking quite tidy until I used some pinflair glue gel to attach. While it's still not quite set I think I'll take it off and tie again. I'll use some tombow to stick it on, not much that wont hold tight.

Ink pad racks for pennies

Thanks to a mishap on a quad bike I've spent the last 8 weeks with my right hand in a cast, oops lol. Wasn't fun really as I could barely brush my teeth left handed let alone stamp. so I decided to tackle a job that I've been sort of tempted to do for a while but had kept putting off.. Sort my ink pads out.

Ok I'll admit I've got rather a few (stop laughing Angie) and my SU inks are all beautifully displayed in a nice wooden rack (not that cheap) but thanks to the new colour renovation I wasnt going to have enough slots to house the inks I'd intended ordering.

Brainwave time, make my own but I havent got the tools let alone ability to make one out of wood so I decided to see if cardstock would be strong enough. Armed with my mates hougie board (she hates it so I have it on a permanent loan, cheers Sara)I did work out that if I shoved an embossing tool into the cast and held it between my index & middle finger I could at least use a scoring board. Out came the rulers, quite a few sheets of strong card and a whopping great roll of strong dst.

It took a few goes but I managed to make my first rack. Woohoo, 1 down another 5 to go!



This is how my desk looks now with my new ink pad racks, it won't stay this tidy for very long.







Here's how I made them.

Take some time, read through and see if you can work out the pics before attempting as there are a few small things that make a massive difference to the end result. You might want to grab a cuppa first as the instructions have seemed to resemble a novel, sorry. Each rack has taken less than an hour to make so please don't be put off. Once you get going it's quite easy.

This is the basic folding & cutting pattern for the shelves. The dashed lines are scores and the solid lines cut. If you look closely you'll see on lines a & b there are cuts both sides with just the section below the letters being scored.

If you've ever made a 3*3 memory book from a single sheet of 12*12 you might recognise the general principle.

I havent added sizes just yet, with there being more than a few common sizes it would get just a wee bit confusing. There are size diagrams at the very end of this post.

Worth pointing out that if you are making sleeves for supersized ink pads like SU you'll only fit 2 sleeves to a sheet of a4.


Here's the first sheet scored, pic is using the 2 panel sleeve for SU inks.








I've cut and folded the card. Doesnt matter which way you go but the horizontal folds have to be in the opposite direction of the vertical ones. Sorry if that doesnt make sense, it will in a minute.








Here's the first tip I found out the hard way. The dst needs to go the full length of the card, not just those two tiddly bits. You'll get a tidier rack if you get the dst as close to the edges as possible.







Sorry, the next step isn't something that worked in the pictures I took so I had to redo them.

I'm using a sheet cut and scored for the versamark size pads as this bit is the one that gets people flustered.

Ignore for now where the sticky is, this is all about how we fold them.

BTW I used a nestie circle in this one to make a finger grove. Bad idea as it really weakens the sleeve.











Bring A & B up and stick B to C. Try and make sure they're straight as you stick them.









Tuck C (along with a & b) underneath d








Bring D up and stick to E.



















Now the bases are stuck together it's just a case of sticking all the sides together. If you feel that you're handling a live octopus, first one is the worst. Now that you're sticking them together you'll notice that one side is very slightly shorter than the other. The shorter side is the one that goes on the inside. Be very careful and make sure the top of the longer side is lined up with the top of the fold on the longer side. You'll get a very lopsided tower if you dont!



That's the first of the stacks made. Now you need to make a couple/few more if you're as bad an inkpadholic as me. I wouldn't have more than 12 sleeves together though as they've surprisingly heavy when filled. That's not a problem when they're on the desk but you don't want to struggle carrying them to crops etc.

For stability it helps if you cut some card into the same height and depth and stick them to each side.

Now you've stabilised the stacks use the trusty dst and stick them together.

I used a1 centura pearl cardstock and made an outer shell with double fold sides. Not fun working with the hougie on my lap and the card dangling all over the place lol Pointless me giving sizes for the outer box as each depends on the thickness of cardstock used. If in doubt you're more than welcome to email me the size of your completed inner and I'll work it out for you.

Total cost of my rack, £1.50 tops and £1 of that was the a1 card stock.

It wasnt until I'd battled with the sheet of a1 card and finished the first rack that I had a 2nd brainwave.... washing (laundry) tablet boxes. They're often sort of the right size.

This was a 48tablet sized box. It didn't really fit 2 pads longwise iykwim but they worked quite nicely being put in sideways. Using the same principle I managed to make a set of really deep sleeves & drawers, perfect size for holding my tim holtz cutndry foam applicator and spare bits of foam.

Since taking the original pics I've turned a 24 tablet size box into a holder for my alchie inks. I did have to trim the sides down but I'm dead chuffed with it. It should be possible to adapt the sleeves to fit lots of craft toys, promarkers, embossing powders, cosmic shimmer mists.. I'd love to see what you can all come up with.


As promised these are the sizes

First one holds the pads with the narrow side showing, the 2nd with the long front showing. Reinkers/Alchie inks need scoring on 1, 2, 3, 4 & 4.74" and to be 2" deep for the shorter alchie inks, 2 .5 for distress reinkers.















One of my lovely docraft buddies Noreen came for monthly playday earlier this week and you can see the ones she's made on her blog Hers are posher than mine as she's taken the time to decorate them.

Making a rosette

There are probably easier ways to make a rosette but this is how I make them.

Apologies for the horrid papers used but daughters bf is staying with us for a few weeks until his new flat is ready and as a consequence I'm having to share my playroom and all of my decent stash hidden away. (Took me over 8 hours to tidy it up yesterday, oops) Like most of the cardweight capable punches my SU border punches don't like thin nasty paper and I would have had a better result if I'd used something thicker than cheap loo paper ;o)

Punch the entire length of 12*12 or a4 card stock and trim to the required width to create a band. In this case I used the SU lacey border and cut the black to 3" wide and the pink & white ( the photo shows the white back) to 2". Using a score board score evenly all the way across at about 1cm apart, for mine I scored at the beginning & middle of the pattern. It's worth pointing out that the entire rosette will be more than twice as large as the width you've chosen and the wider the band the more card you'll need. A 1" wide strip will only require 1 length of 12*12 whereas mine took 2 lengths of 12*12 for each layer.

Once scored fold to create concertinas taking care to fold in the same places of patterns for all the pieces.

Punch or nestie a circle of card, doesnt matter what card you use as it's going to be covered. I used a 1 3/8" SU punch which I then folded in half and marked across the centre with a pencil. If you are making a small rosette you don't need to mark the centre, this is just to help so that I get an even splay of folds. Use a very strong and quick drying glue over the edges of one half. I've gone overboard with my trusty tombow glue, not because I need to but so you can see the glue on the photo.

Start with one of the concertinas and tease into place around half of the circle. This is the time you'll wish you had a dozen fingers on each hand ;o) Hold it firmly in place until the glue dries, it should only be a minute or so if you've used a good strong glue and didnt apply too much. Mine took about 3 minutes! If you're making a small rosette and only need one strip you just need to bend the end to meet the start.

Repeat the glue on the bottom half and add the 2nd concertina, hold in place until dry again. If when you let go it starts to rise in the middle don't panic, this is quite normal and will be sorted out in a while.

If adding a second layer of folds lightly apply some glue to the top of the folds on the base layer. Don't go up to the centre or the edges, a band around the middle is sufficient. Gently ease the folds into place and push down. It can be a bit fiddly if you try to get the centre edges lined up so if need be trim away the centre edge a bit before putting into place. It doesnt matter if the top layers arent the same width because we're going to cover it. Once finished if necessary glue the ends together to neaten.

This is me teasing the folds into place, for once I've managed to hide how ink stained my fat lil puds are lol.

If you want to add a ribbon dangler glue it into place now.

Next step is to cover the centre, I'm looking for a more traditional rosette look so I've used the 2nd largest large circle nestie (black) and the next size down (pink) which has been embossed with a bug folder but any size would have worked provided it was large enough to cover the edge where the 2 layers of rosette meet. Add a strong glue to the back and position on the rosette and press down quite firmly.






As you can see from the pic it's still trying to lift up in the middle. You can hold it down for a while if you want, I prefer to just plonk one of my heavier punches on top and clear off to make a cuppa lol. By the time the tea is made and drunk the rosette will be perfectly flat and ready to decorate or use as an embellie.














Not sure what I'm going to do with this whopper as it measures nearly 6" across but the lil one I made (on the first picture and made from a single inch strip) will no doubt end up on a card at some point.