...For T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas, Inchy By Inch, Soartful, Inspiration Avenue, and One Powerful Hour...
So Much Fun...
OK, this was by far, the most fun I've ever had making a tag! And not only did I have to use my imagination and improvise quite a bit since I never shop while making a project and always use what I have on hand to complete it, but I even got one of the steps entirely backwards, and it still turned out so well that I have fallen in love with it!
Charming...
And isn't that little charm just the most adorable thing you've ever seen? It reminds me of a festive house, warm and cozy and all decked out for the season! Definitely makes you nostalgic to be home for the holidays! If you look very close and very carefully (click to enlarge the photo of the tag above), you might be able to make out the word "wish" which is just a whisper of script over the top of the Christmas tree inside the charm. Certainly appropriate, because after all, what's Christmas without wishes?
And This Is "Note"worthy...
Now take a close-up look at the back of the charm. Nothing is left unfinished. Inside is a snippet of a song, because what's Christmas without gloriously sung carols? But truth be told, I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas music. So much of it is beautiful and heavenly, and so much of it is boring, repetitive, gratuitous and common -- overplayed and over-rated, which is why we make our own mixes at home and play just what we like throughout the season!
Using What I Have On Hand...
As always, I'll direct you to T!m's blog so that you can see what he did and how he did it. As for me, since I never shop during a project and always use what's in my stash, here's a list of my improvisations:
- Thank goodness I had that set of stamps from Stamper's Annonymous, otherwise I don't know how I could have even come close to the way this tag turned out. But I don't have many any re-inkers, and I don't have a sheet of cut-n-dry felt, so I had to improvise here. Instead of inking up the felt and making a custom stamp pad (which is definitely on my list of things to do in the future!), I was very comfortable inking the stamp itself with Marvy dye markers, which I do have in plentiful supply. This was a great solution, especially since I really didn't have an immediate use for multiples of this stamp in color. So I colored the part of the image I wanted, breathed on it to re-moisten it just before pressing, and stamped!
- I used a K&Company rub-on for my word "wish" instead of a word cut out and pasted.
- Ooooops! I got T!m's instructions backwards for stamping the tag. Instead of stamping with black archival ink and then coloring the background with distress inks, I colored first and stamped over. Not a problem. It works either way.
- I have only 3 stickles (*sniffs back a tear*), but picket fence is one of them, and it worked perfectly to create snow and icicles on the roof of the charm when I squeezed it over a teeny bit of titanium white acrylic paint applied with a toothpick.
- I was lucky enough to have the frames, the glass, and the memory capsules in my stash. I even have a selection of Barbara Trombley's fabulous glass glitters, but alas, none of it is "clear". So I had to improvise, and once again, I love how it turned out! I used a tiny smattering of Suze Weinberg's iridescent Zamora beads (which generous Carol gave me for free as she scooped them up from the floor of her shop after I broke the jar--clumsy, butter-fingers me!), along with a few speckles of silver glass glitter, just for the charm and sparkle. The iridescent beads are awsome! They play off the lights beautifully and don't occlude the background image.
I think that everything else I did was done from T!m's instructions, which is fabulous because there's so much to be learned in using someone else's techniques along with the products they're actually using. Even if you'd rather use your own stash and methods for projects at hand, it's valuable to accumulate stores of information and experience from the heads and hands of other artisans which can be applied to pieces of your own work in the future. I know I said this very same thing in yesterday's post, but really, it is worth repeating.
Now I'm off to...
See what needs to be cleaned-up after last night's desert hurricane. The rain was driven horizontally by 75mph winds, and this lasted for hours!
Infuse myself with lots more caffeine to stay awake through the afternoon and evening.
Forget about cooking and let everyone make their own soup and sandwiches tonight,
While I make more tags!!
Have a great day, Everyone!
