Merry, Merry, Merry

Good day!

Supplies and notes:

• This panel originated a few months ago, but I only just pulled it out with fresh "holiday eyes"... haha!  I'm ready now!
• Strathmore watercolor paper stamped with an old pine bough stamp in Jet Black Archival 
• The stamped area was smooshed in some Aged Mahogany and Pine Needles DIs
• Sentiment written with a Faber-Castell Pitt Brush pen
• Edges of paper distressed with a Making Memories distresser (my favorite distresser... I did not like the Tonic distresser and got rid of it, which is something I seldom do with craft supplies)
• After the edges were distressed I rubbed them with DecoArt Metallic Lustre in Gold Rush 
• Stampendous Aged Gold frantage EP added

I'll share this at the following challenges:

• Mixed Media Card Challenge
  
• Nacho Average Challenge
  
• CAS-ual Fridays
  
• STAMPlorations December CAS
  

Hip holidays

This totally reminds me of my friend Brooke.  I think I'll give it to her to give someone.

Darn lighting this afternoon...

Supplies:

• DCWV polka-dotted paper from the watercolor stack
• Gold paper in the background is Core'dinations collab. with Tim Holtz-- it's the metallic kraft-core... love it!
• Sentiment was cut with Tim's Holiday Words dies
• Studs are by Recollections 

I'd like to share this at the following challenges:

• CAS-ual Fridays
  
• Inkspirational
  

Holiday Thanks

I love the custodians at my school.  I appreciate the work they do for me and everyone else at our site.  Actually, I substituted for one of them this fall because there are no custodian sub.'s in our area and one hadn't taken a week off in 36 years-- it proved to be hard work!  (... and I didn't even have to do all of the stuff they normally do... I just had to vacuum classrooms and empty classroom trashes after school!)

Anyway, I love those guys.  I buy them a bag of coffee every year for Christmas, and these are the tags I taped to them (using 7 Gypsies red msking tape, not shown... but looks perfect for a couple men):

Supplies:

• The library card bases were painted with "Thanks" a few months ago when I was practicing my true brush lettering for a project at Tag, You're It
• For the seasonal touches, I used Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals mixed with some water on my mat and painted some conifer branches and berries, and I also added some splatter.  (I used an old, tore-up brush, and it yielded excellent results with it's misshapen bristles and gunk!  Looking forward to playing with my messed-up brushes [thanks, kids] in the future!)

I plan to share the "Thanks" tags at the following challenges:

• STAMPlorations December CAS
  
• Nacho Average Challenge
  
• Simon Says Wednesday: Gift it... these were taped to coffee bags

SOS: Tag, you're it!

We are in the thick of the holiday season, and this week at Shopping Our Stash, we are encouraging you to make some tags with the craft items you have hoarded lovingly saved.

My tags are for the fancy beers my husband gives his coworkers every Christmas:

The metallic Dstress Stain was actually very effective in making these festive.

The beer is called "Reason for the Season" and it has trees on the label... sorry I didn't get a picture of it.

Supplies and notes:

• 7 Gypsies tags bought last summer when I forgot library cards on a trip out of town
• Red and green twine from the dollar store last winter
• Vintage Photo and Tarnished Brass Distress Stains... probably a couple years old each.  I inked them onto the craft mat then added water and smooshed.  (I wanted to do a starry-snowy sky with Chipped Sapphire and Brushed Pewter, but the hubs wrinkled his nose like that would be too froo-froo... he wanted the aged look.  Fine.  For the record, he also wanted basic hemp twine, but I over-rode that and added the festive red and green.  Ha.)
• The trees were cut using a brand new die out of Crate Paper from years ago, adhered to the tags with Mod Podge my sis bought me for Christmas last year.  Oh, I also edged the trees with Frayed Burlap DI just for a bit of dimension.
• The "Cheers" stamp is from a Target set from a few years ago inked with Vintage Photo from the Mixed Media palette.

I hope you join us... make some tags!  (If you want to see some truly pretty work, go check out my SOS sisters... they are the bomb!)

Crazy Sweater Weather

May your days be merry and briggghhhhttt...

...and may all your sweaters be crazy.

Supplies:

• KOC Color Burst through Tim's stencil on Strathmore watercolor, cut out and accented with Faber-Castell Pitt 
• "Joy" (unknown make) inked with Distress embossing ink and heat-embossed with Stamp-n Stuff in Green Tinsel
• 7 Gypsies tag, faux-stitched with a Faber-Castell Pitt 
• Japanese cloth tape at left
• Scrap paper punched with a Martha Stewart punch for horizontal layer
• Tag written with a Sharpie and bordered with some Stampendous glitter
• Generic-brand twine

I'd like to share this at the following:

• Mojo Monday:
  
• Creative Corner: Christmas Time
• Nacho Average #186: red, green and white
  

  

  Look what I was snacking on...

Simon Says... Christmas gifts!

Oh, so happy to play with Simon Says on Monday this week!

I've made library tag notebooks before, but I decided to better my design and make a stack for holiday gifts.  Here is the stack I've done so far:

Supplies and notes: 

• These were made using old library catalog cards (which are approximately 3"x5")
• For the covers, I just looked through my stash of cards from the year and selected a few...
• The interior cards were cut using the perforating blade at one inch (25 cards per notebook)
• They were then all punched at ~1" and 2" for binding
• I used various twines to do a quick-bind... and even made a few tassels! 

Yay!  Booyah!  Gifts!

Now my husband (bless him) wants one for the woods for his vest pocket! :) For him, I'll make  a more durable cover and bind it from the top with more of a blanket stitch.

SOS: Pretty-gifted...

Hello!

Could you guess what I implied with my post's title?

This week at Shopping Our Stash, us gals would like you to join us in creating some gift packaging with some of your stashed items and tools!

For this week's challenge, I created a special bag to contain the Champagne cork ornament made for my best friend Sarah and her new husband, Andrew:

Supplies and notes:

• Nautical paper from DCWV's "Hey Sailor" stack, purchased in spring
• Ribbon from the favors at Sarah's wedding
• Leftover Mini Greenery punched in gold... was just sitting on my desk...
• The shell was leftover from wedding decor. I rubbed it with some DecoArt Metallic Lustre in Gold Rush 
• Had to add some little gold jingle bells...
• The tissue paper and gold trim is by Martha Stewart
• I used Glossy Accents and Tombow adhesives

Yes, yes... Christmas is just around the corner, but don't discount any other occasions you may need a gift for!  Come join us at SOS for some stash-busting crafting fun!