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.