A Gift For You

Today I'm featuring a Christmas card using the new A Gift for You stamp set from Red Rubber Designs.

Coincidentally, there is another Gift for You awaiting you at Red Rubber Designs and it's in honor of Pam, owner of RRD, who is celebrating her birthday.

Here is the gift she has for all of you :

Take 50% OFF 50 Items for 5.0
Days!
(Discount shows up in your cart.)
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FREE Shipping
on orders $50 and over!*
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$5.00
Shipping on orders under $50!*
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ALL stamps
are reduced in price!
(Except the
Dollar stamps - they're still only $1!)

Now, I'll bet you will never guess how old Pam is this birthday:):)

Find out more details about the big celebration here:

http://blog.red-rubber-designs.com/2012/08/birthday-bash-celebration.html

Day 12 of Tim's Tags {And I'm Exhausted}

I don't know how Tim manages to create all these tags 12 days in a row, but it has exhausted me!  As Day 12 rolled around {thankfully} I had to get this tag off early this morning if it was going to happen at all.  The wind is howling outside, a snowstorm is expected, and I'm supposed to be making a long drive out to my sister's house.

So I made my tag.  I'll give you glimpses of it as it really was not fit to print, shall we say.  IRL it looks okay, but it just would not photograph well at all.  And probably the only thing resembling Tim's tag for today was the background paper I used.   There's another reason I'm glad this tag thing is over -- I'm getting frustrated cutting into my Seasonal Paper Pad!!


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Well, the good news is that Tag Tuesday will return this week -- that almost sounds like a joke at this point.  But we still have a few more weeks before Christmas to finish up our colors of Christmas series.  So I hope you'll pop back on Tuesday and join us for a non-stressful, take your time, easy kind of tag!

Tim's Tags Day 11 -- and I'm Off!!

I started out today EARLY because I've got a million things to do this Saturday two weeks before Christmas.  Woke up and was THRILLED to see Tim's tag was not too difficult to replicate.

I had the exact dictionary page he used -- and that was about it.   I used some snowflakes as a mask for my background and Flower Soft for the snow.

I like today's tag.  I can tell you yesterday's tag is never going to happen:):)

And with that I am off to do the million things I've scheduled for today!

Tim's Tags Day 9 -- More Flowers!

Day 9 finds me faced with another flower I didn't have the die to make -- only this one was a lot easier to create and turned out much more successfully.   I just cut the paper on my own as Tim showed in his video and -- voila -- this time it turned out proportionately!.

Time and inspiration kept me from yesterday's tag, so I was glad to see this one this morning was on the easy side.  It forced me to cut into my Seasonal Paper pad (which I'm not fond of doing) for the background and flower, but seeing as this is one of my favorite tags I guess it was worth it.

Best tip from Tim today:  Tim's video on how to make a rosette was very helpful and can be created without his die, too.

Tim's Tags Day 7 -- That Darn Flower

For me it all started with the flower.  Yes, I had the sticky back canvas and the grungeboard, but I didn't have the flower die.  So I figured I could just eyeball it and cut out the pieces myself.  (Oh, I didn't have that mist either to spray the sticky back canvas, but I made do with some reinkers and water in a mini mister).

Well, cutting out the flowers myself gave me an ENORMOUS flower.   I liked the flower a lot, especially when I stamped the text on it, but it was ENORMOUS.  So my tag, therefore, had to be ENORMOUS.

I cut a piece of cardboard heavy enough to hold my ENORMOUS flower.

From there I just went out on my own, adding the calendar, the fragment with 25 behind it and the clip at top.  I already had some canvas letters, so I simply scraped the edges with my finger to distress them (turns out you don't really need that fancy tool to do this:)

And there you have it.  I like it a lot. 

Oh, and in case you are wondering -- I happened to be up at 4:30 this morning and this darn flower took me an hour and a half to make.  Had to kind of hurry with the rest of it so I could get off to work!
Did I mention I really like that darn flower?

Tim's 12 Tags -- Day 6

No tag on Day 5 from me -- it was just too busy of a day.  When I had a little time in the evening I was too tired to really get inspired.  So I'm letting Day 5 go and moving on to Day 6.

Which was a little interesting given that the main focus of Tim's tag was a very large reindeer and I only had one rather small reindeer stamp to try and substitute.   So I made up for his size by giving him a shiny red nose!

I liked the idea of creating a woodland scene though and added a rusty metal moon to mine.

His tissue paper ribbon at the bottom was a great touch and I carried the music theme to the top of mine by stamping on my ribbon.  Along with a little jingle bell I added.

Feeling much better now knowing I didn't miss another day.........



Tim's 12 Tags -- Day 4

Today's tag was another fun one -- and easy.  Which is good because our first snow is falling today and there's snow to be shovelled!

It did require me to cut in my Tim Holtz Seasonal Paper Pad (for the Santa paper background)  which I was very reluctant to do.   I guess I'll have to buy another pad just to look at.

I deviated a little from his tag, but now awfully much although  I did bring a bit of red into my tag.  The only ticket I had said "trust" so I kind of stamped "wish" on a piece of brown cardstock and stuck that over part of the ticket.

The coolest trick of today's tag was how Tim showed how to create this snowflake patterned blue facets.  You can see how he did it here.

Tim's 12 Tags -- Day 3

I'm loving these tags of Tim's!!   They are incredibly designed -- and leave so much room for you to add your own touches or change things up as you need to.

It was only as I tried to reproduce his background that I saw how many layers and how much detail he adds to things.  
I had his bird die and I also had vintage greeting he used from his seasonal paper pad.  (Can I just take a minute to say that his seasonal paper pad is the most fabulous set of papers I have ever seen.   Out and out my all time favorites!  I will have to have one I'll use and one I'll just keep to look at:)

I also chose to create a pinwheel flower for my tag as I had just been making some of these the last few days and had it handy.

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Like that telephone in the background on the first picture?  As I was walking this morning around the neighborhood (I like to go early when it's still dark out) I spied it in my neighbor's trash. (ETA:  I didn't actually go rummaging here, I just spied it sitting on top of the newspapers in the recycle bin.)  I scooped it up, brought it home, cleaned it up a bit -- and now I have a super cool retro phone for my office.

Tim's Tags Day 2..

..and not only is it a much easier tag to create (only took me 1/2 an hour today as opposed to three yesterday), but I was doing it at 5:00 a.m. instead of 3:00 a.m.

You can see Tim's original tag here.   I followed it pretty much as he showed.  I didn't have the Happy Holidays stamp, but I thought my Merry Christmas stamp looked very Tim-esque.  I also didn't have a bird charm, so I silver embossed one from a stamp I had.

The best tip of today's tag:  Tim showed how to make your own stamp pad of sorts  from Cut and Dry Foam.  Since I just bought a whole new package of this I was able to give it a try.   He has shown this in the past, but I have to admit this is the first time I really understood what he was saying.  I can't explain it....

you'll have to check out his post today to see for yourself.  Anyway, I didn't have the exact shades of reinkers I needed so my pincone came out a little less vibrant than I would have liked

All in all though I think he created a lovely tag and I'm pleased with mine as well.



My Three Hour Tag

Wow, Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas really started up with a bang!  I can so appreciate those of you who commented yesterday that they didn't think they'd have much time to play along with his Christmas tag fun.  I wouldn't have even attempted this one -- except I woke up at three in the morning.  So by the time six o'clock rolled around, I was just waiting for enough light outside to take a picture.

As you can see, mine is substantially different than Tim's.  Didn't have the house or fence die, so I created those on my own.  With my tree I went in a totally different direction, using corrugated cardboard and then white embossing it for a snow effect.  Speaking of snow, I had none of the stuff he used, so I opted for flower soft.  I added a little garland to my fence, too, which I quite liked.

Actually, I like the way my tag turned out, even though it I had to venture out of the Tim Zone for quite a bit of it. 

Best little gimmick of his from this tag:  Love using the bit of cotton from a cotton swab for the chimney smoke!

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas -- Day 11

Just about the only thing I DID have for today's tag over at Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas was -- as I mentioned a few posts earlier -- the vintage images. No chipboard reindeer (or any Christmas chipboard really), no brad maker.

But I did have this chipboard skate -- and I knew I had a vintage Christmas card with a skating santa. How cute is he? So I went that route with my tag today.

I did use the distress-ink-on-the-craft-sheet-and-then-misting-it technique for my background as well as stamping the background with a flourish and snowflake stamps. I had flowers I could have used, but I liked the idea of these paper snowflakes better.

To create my brads I punched my vintage images and then used -- guess what? A Krylon pen, again, to outline the edges to create the rims.

I was really happy to find yet another way to use these vintage images I have.

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas -- Day 9

A couple things about today's tag -- first of all, thank you, Tim! He really gave me inspiration for today's tag to highlight something I've been wanting to and was looking for a way to do so. Secondly, for those who have commented on how quickly I seem to get my tags done, think 4:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. (Which could explain why I was trying to adhere my pictures to the film strip with Crackle Accents instead of Glossy Accents and making a mess of it.) Finally, I was able to come up with just about everything Tim used on his tag but only because we received so much of it on the cruise. However, I didn't use everything I could have because I wanted to take my tag in a slightly different direction than he did.
I wanted to use copies of some vintage cards I'd been given last year by my sister-in-law (a box of 750 of them in all). And although we used the Glossy Accents and the film strip on the cruise, I forgot about it. It's a perfect way to showcase some of them in this tag.
I didn't think a photo as Tim used on his tag would go as well with mine, so I chose this caroler by Art Impressions instead.
I didn't have the metal numbers 25, but on the cruise we all received the year of '09.
And while I don't have a label maker, I figured I could white emboss my greeting on black paper for the same effect.
I was glad I did have the metal flowers -- who'd have thought to paint them with acrylic paints? Tim, of course.
I think this is my favorite tag Tim has made so far.

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas -- Day 6

We are half way through Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas. I started my tag when I woke up at four o'clock this morning, so I've got it done and posted before I even leave for church!

I liked the tag Tim made a lot, unfortunately did not have that car stamp or tree. But I did have a smaller car from Art Impressions. And a smaller tree. As a result, I used a smaller tag so they didn't seem dwarfed. It was a lot of fun working with that small size tree....not!

I didn't have the snow stuff he used either, so mine is a mix of Radiant Pearls and some glittery medium I had. I didn't use the bingo piece because it seemed to large for my tag.

I really liked the way Tim used the text background on this tag.

Day 5 of Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas

It's Day 5 of Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas and, once again, I was fortunate enough to have some of the embellishments, namely, the fragments. I have had some of these for a while and never really knew what to do with them. Then on the cruise we worked with them and I was inspired. So it was fun to work with these on some Christmas ideas. The Glossy Accents behind the fragments really works well.

For my fragment ornaments I used a couple of vintage PSX stamps. The images were just the right size.
I didn't bother with wire for my hanging ornaments but instead used some gold stickers. Once again, I resorted to my Krylon pen as an improvisation of the ornament tops. So much easier than all that paper and tape stuff Tim used.

I've really got to get him familiar with the Krylon pen.

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas -- Day 4

Whew! Today's tag at Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas was definitely the easiest. At least the way I created my tag. I didn't create the whole custon stamp on the felt pad, just stamped a collage on my tag. And even though I like it quite a bit, don't know how many times I'd stamp this if I had made the custom stamp.

I did luck out and had a few of the embellishments he used as these were some of the things we acquired on the cruise. Yup, I like this one quite a bit.

Inspired by Tim -- Day 3

Boy, Tim sure makes it look easy. His instructions for this plaid background looked easy enough. But this tag is about the 8th one I attempted... and that I liked well enough to stamp on. At first I was going the wrong way with the applicator and alcohol inks and everything was smooshed together. When I finally figured that out, I had some really, really ugly color schemes. I finally settled on this one, but by that time I wasn't up to much else, so my stamping is pretty simple. Didn't think the twine would look to good on this one, so I went with the gold cord instead.

Here's my lightbulb moment of the day: Yesterday we used radiant pearls and water to flick gold spots on our tag. Couldn't find them today -- even though I just used them yesterday and know they are still somewhere on my craft table. But necessity being the mother of invention, I discovered that a Krylon pen will give the same effect. I simply pooled some on my work surface and picked it up with a paintbrush and flicked it just like Tim showed. I actually got better coverage (but don't tell Tim that:)

Tim's 12 Tags of Christmas

As probably the whole world knows (as he had 3000 comments after his first tag) Tim Holtz is doing his 12 Tags of Christmas again this year.

I tried doing Day 1 and it was a disaster. But yesterday's tag was much easier. So here is Tim's Tag for Day 2 and above is my version.