First tag of Christmas

Hello! Are you having a good New Year's Eve? We are. We did a bit of shopping today, the girls got gift certificates for a toy store so we went out. Then we went for supper at a great Chinese restaurant in our end of town, then came home and played with the new toys. Now we're tucked up snugly and will try to stay up late enough to ring in the new year. We'll see. I was up very, very late last night finishing my tags for the 12 Tags of Christmas, which was a totally self-imposed assignment, but really a huge amount of fun and a real creative rush. I did get them all done and emailed off to Tim Holtz himself, and entered in the contest. My fortune cookie tonight said I would be successful in everything I turn my hand to, so I am optimistic about my chances.

Here's the first tag, based on this one by Tim Holtz. Design elements I used were the snowman motif, the steps for creating the background (distress ink, crackle treatment) and stickle-based icicles. I used blues and pinks and purples for the background, and stamped with SU snowflakes, also with a SU snow-related rub on. The snowman is Sunshine Designs, coloured with markers and cut out. The ribbon is SU. The tag is manila, smaller than Tim's but I had a bunch of these in my stash and they work surprisingly well with all the abuse they get. I did find that really good cardstock drank up too much ink for the wetter distress techniques. It tends to float a bit better on the manila - must be coated with something. Anyway, I liked how this one came out. It's quite sparkly in real life. I still don't know what I'm going to do with all these tags. It was a real hoot doing them, even if I did stay up far too late for my own good.

Well, I should get off the computer and spend some time with my true love, who did not (bless him) give me six geese a-laying today. Two children a-playing was quite enough for me!

Happy New Year!