Holiday Gift Tags | Christmas Series #4

Hi Friends! Today I’m sharing some easy-to-make holiday gift tags using a variety of products from various companies.

Each year I gather all my tag dies and the Christmas-related stamps and dies and I’ll spend a couple Saturdays making an assortment of tags to attach to my holiday gifts. I thought I would share a few of them with you to possibly provide some design inspiration. I love creating the tags, each one is its own little piece of quick to create art.

This one was created using the Sizzix / Tim Holtz die set called "Yuletide" (666073). I die cut the wreath elements from some Simon Says Stamp gold metallic cardstock, Cardstock Warehouse Stardream Silver matte silver cardstock, and some green cardstock scraps I had in my stash. I completed the little wreath by adding some Honey Bee Stamps white pearl embellishments to make a cute little wreath tag. I glued two tags together so I would have a place to stamp the To and From lines on the back.

The nutcracker tag was created using the Pawsome Stamps "Crackin' Christmas" nutcracker stamp colored with Copic markers. The background of the tag was made by running a white piece of cardstock through the diecutting machine with the Simon Says Stamp "Scandinavian Christmas" embossing folder. After the paper was embossed and cut into a tag, I used the Altenew "Almond Butter" ink pad lightly across the raised areas to highlight the embossed design. For the greeting I used the Merry & Bright sentiment from Altenew's "Holiday Tag Sentiments" stamp set. The final touch was simply adding a few gold-colored sequins placed here and there.

I hope you found a couple ideas for creating your own tags, they are really quite fun to make. Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!

Until next time…

HeroFest Holiday Cheer Card Drive | Silver Village | Christmas Series #3

Hi Friends! Sharing some more homemade cheer that I created for the Hero Arts HeroFest Holiday Cheer Card Drive. The cards collected by Hero Arts will be donated to the Bay Area Rescue Mission in December. I hope you find inspiration in this holiday card installment for creating your own cheerful, Christmas cards.

I’m so excited to see all the makers creating Christmas cards! For this A2, landscape-oriented card my inspiration was the Hero Arts Neighborhood Houses Fancy Dies. I’m not a card maker who drafts everything out on paper first. No, no. I always start with a stamp, die set, or embossing folder and then decide how I can work this exciting product to fit the card I want to make. Backwards way of doing things… probably. Haha!

I started this project by taking a piece of textured, gray-ish cardstock and cutting it to be 4-1/4” x 5-1/2”, then grabbed a piece of white cardstock that was just a tad smaller than A2 size and used Tim Holtz Distress Oxide in Speckled Egg and blended it all over the cardstock with the exception of the bottom portion since I was going to cover that up and then used Tim Holtz Distress Oxide in Weathered Wood to barely tint the outer edges of the panel to make it a tiny bit darker. I splattered Dina Wakely White Gloss Spray with a paint brush all across the panel to give it a snowy look. I set this aside to dry.

Using Avery Elle Slimline Border dies, I cut two strips of Cardstock Warehouse Diamond Print Glitter White cardstock to be my snowy hills for the card. I glued the first snowy hill to the inked card panel about 1/3 the way up and used Simon Says Stamp 3D Foam Squares to adhere the second, smaller snowy hill below the first one ensuring I didn’t attach the foam squares too close to the top edge so I would have room to nestle my houses and trees behind it when I was ready.

Next, I used the Hero Arts Houses Fancy Dies and die cut all the houses out of Cardstock Warehouse Stardream Silver cardstock and cut them a second time from the Diamond Print Glitter White cardstock that I used for the snowy hills. I cut the rooftops off the white glitter cardstock houses (since that’s all I would be using) and discarded the rest. Then I applied a thick layer of Tim Holtz Distress Collage Medium to all the white glittery rooftop pieces and, before the glue dried, I coated them with Pink & Main’s Flock with Glitter in the color Sparkling Cottontail. After the flock/glue dried, I glued the flocked rooftops to the top of each of the silver cardstock houses and set those aside to dry.

Now for the trees. I used the tree dies from the Hero Arts Houses Fancy Dies and cut eleven trees out of the same textured gray-ish cardstock I used for the A2 card front panel. To give them a weathered, metallic silver look I used the Sterling Tim Holtz Foundry Wax and applied it quickly to all the trees by “pouncing” it on with a small paint brush and then melting the Foundry Wax with my heat gun.

I adhered three of the completed houses and a few of the gilded trees to the back snowy hill on my card front simply using wet glue, then I popped the front row of houses and gilded tree up with Simon Says Stamp 3D Foam Squares.

For the sentiment, I stamped the Merry Christmas stamp from the Hero Arts Holiday Ornaments stamp set onto a scrap piece of white cardstock with Altenew Clear Embossing Ink and used Ranger Super Fine Silver embossing powder, then heat set the embossing powder with my heat gun. I glued the sentiment to a scrap piece of the textured, gray-ish cardstock and adhered it to my card front using Simon Says Stamp 3D Foam Squares.

This card was a super easy one to make, but it did take some extra time since I had to wait for the glued flock to dry, but I think it was worth the wait.

Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!

Until next time…

HeroFest Holiday Cheer Card Drive | Christmas Stockings | Christmas Series #2

Hi Friends! Sharing some more homemade cheer that I created for the Hero Arts HeroFest Holiday Cheer Card Drive. The cards collected by Hero Arts will be donated to the Bay Area Rescue Mission in December. I hope you find inspiration in this holiday card installment for creating your own cheerful, Christmas cards.

I started out by stamping the Hero Arts Fireplace stamp set’s three Christmas stockings onto a scrap piece of Canson XL Bristol Smooth cardstock using Lawn Fawn Jet Black ink since I was going to watercolor the images. I used the Zig Clean Color Real Brush watercolor pens in Light Green and Geranium Red to watercolor all three stockings. After they were dry, I used some smaller elements from the Spellbinders Christmas Blooms die set and die cut enough to add three or four pieces of greenery/blooms to fill each of the stockings – I glued those into place with Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Collage Medium. Next, I applied a pretty thick layer of Distress Collage Medium to the top cuff of each stocking and generously covered the wet glue with Pink & Main Flock With Glitter in the color Sparkling Cottontail.

For the card front panels, the first one was cut to A2 size from some Christmas themed, patterned cardstock I had in my stash, and I cut the smaller panel out of more Canson XL Bristol Smooth cardstock using the second to the largest die from the Paper Rose Stitched Rectangles die set. Using Hero Arts Script Bold Prints background stamp, I stamped the image onto the smaller, white cardstock panel with Altenew Embossing Ink and applied Brutus Monroe Alabaster White Embossing Powder all over the inked panel, tapped off the excess, and used my heat tool to melt the powder. For the emboss-resist technique, I used Distress Oxide ink in Antique Linen and a blending brush and covered the entire cardstock panel with the Antique Linen ink. Once that was completed, I took a microfiber cloth to buff away the excess ink that was on top of the embossed background image. Next, I used a foam dome blending tool and Vintage Photo Distress Oxide ink to add a small amount of color to the all the edges of the panel to add a bit of dimension and interest.

I used the Hero Arts Fireplace stamp set again and stamped the Merry Christmas onto a piece of Lawn Fawn Vellum with Altenew Embossing Ink and covered with Ink on 3 Gold Rush Ultra Fine Embossing Powder. I heat set the embossing powder and trimmed the strip of vellum to 1-1/4” wide and wrapped it across the bottom of the smaller, inked card front panel and simply taped the ends on the back side since they wouldn’t be seen by the recipient.

I created the swag across the top of the inked panel by using the small poinsettia die and both evergreen dies from the Spellbinders Christmas Blooms die set. I used red cardstock for the poinsettia and cut it twice from a scrap of red cardstock and die cut each of the fir dies from green cardstock three times for a total of six pieces. I glued the fir branch pieces to the card front, glued the poinsettia die cuts together and then glued them to the center of the fir swag. The final touch to the swag was to add a matte gold embellishment pearl to the center of the poinsettia.

To wrap this card up I attached the three stockings to the card front using Simon Says Stamp 3D Foam Squares and applied Simon Says Stamp Big Momma Foam Tape to the back of the inked panel and attached it to the plaid cardstock. I used some Christmas Red Stickles to the center of the red flowers in the stockings and Holly Green Pops of Color to the center of the pink and yellow flowers. I attached the card front to an A2, top folding card base and this piece of Christmas cheer is completed!

Thank you so much for stopping by to see me - I appreciate you doing so!

Until next time…