Month: December 2011

While not everyone’s favorite person, I can not give anything but mad props to Martha Stewart’s creative team for the holiday products that they release. They are simple, useful, and have really accented my holiday preparations this year! As I wrap, wrap, wrap gifts for my family & friends, I thought I would take a moment and share the products I’ve purchased that are helping make things merry & bright!

Some of these things will come in handy with baked goods, and some of the containers meant for baked goods I think will be fun for gifts of the un-edible variety too!

I will be sure to take photos, and keep on sharing my adventures… 7 more posts in this series are still coming!! 🙂 Hope you’re making merry in your own ways…

I don’t have a ton of share-able pages in my December Daily album at this point. There are a lot of text-only, printed recipes, and visually BORING things at this time. There are no photos, as I’ve not developed any. Up until now, not a lot of craftiness either. Ah, but yesterday’s trip to San Francisco and our visit with Santa made me want to play.

I took the photo and scanned it first so I have a digital back-up in case something happens to this one, or the paper (which I can’t belive is super high quality) fades and the photo is ruined somehow. In doing so I realized that the top of the red paper frame has a slit, and that the photo can come in and out of it. So I removed the photo, mounted the red frame onto kraft cardstock, and got to playing…

I cut out some foil (mounted on grunge paper + embossed) and painted it with my new precious (Jenni Bowlin paint dabber in seed packet) a-la-Tim Holtz ‘enameled metal’ technique. Then? Well then I got greedy, added other colors, and generally made a muck of it. But that is OK! I just die cut a deer and stuck that over it a bit to cover for my craptastic effort. It works.

I took my new embossing powder (just plain clear) + snowflake Tim Holtz stamp for a test drive. Since I do NOT want anything messing with this photo, I put plastic into the photo frame when stamping/emboss powdering so that none got in the photo area and gunked it up. A little heat later…

I did 3 snowflakes + some green patina mist. I also stitched around the very edges – because this is all about the creative play.

Then I just attached some trim, felt shapes, and my die cut (and ink edged) reindeer + foiled (heh) embossed foil and it was done. A 30 minute crafty session, and yesterday’s visit to Santa is already in the books. NO adhesive is touching the photo, so it can still be removed if I so desire or need.

Oh, and I edged the red frame + kraft edge with gold dabber paint (I swear – I use that on EVERYTHING these days)

supplies:

On a separate page I plan on writing about our trip, perhaps put more of the iPhone photos I took, and ask Elizabeth to write about the trip as well. Details like what we did and what favorite parts were. But that page will be more utilitarian. No fancy stuff or embellishing. That’s what I am LOVING about this project – and the way Ali inspires me with her own. Some pages are PLAIN, others fancy. Let the day, amount of time, and mood decide…

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come check out my new class at Big Picture- class starts 2/7/2012 [registration now open!]

I *ADORE* the Tim Holtz 12 tags of Christmas. It’s like taking 12 mini “Tim” classes in awesomeness. I always come away with new ideas and techniques I’m reminded to do more often.

That said, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post this is a time of year when multi-tasking is a good idea, and time is as short as daylight is! SO! My solutions are several, the first being that I wanted to play so I mixed & matched some techniques from Tags 4, 6, and 7. Mix & match works great as well because I don’t have a lot of the things Tim uses, so it allows me to play without frustration of wishing I had the ‘right’ thing to make stuff happen.

True story: I am AWFUL at remembering “how-to”. What happens EVERY SINGLE TIME is that I think I remember it right, set off on my own, then end up changing things because I mixed up ideas or products. Whoops. Sometimes (ahem, my attempt at tag 5) it ends in disaster and frustration. Other times, I end up with something unique and made of awesome. My snowman falls (luckily) into the awesome category. 

I wanted to do the painted foil technique Tim did (tag 6), because I LOVE that foil sheet stuff, and I thought I could combine that look with the die cut within a die cut (tag 4). So here’s what I did/how it went down:

foil placed face down on cutting mat, grunge paper set on top and pressed firmly onto it. Then die cut in snowman shape. THEN I ran it back through the die cut machine using my brick texture fade. I wanted to use snowflakes or something Christmas-y… but alas I do not have any that would work!

Ok, I love it JUST LIKE THAT. ah I’m such a fan of the foil… anyhow! I wanted to do that AWESOME enamel paint thing, so I pulled out paint. Err… except my paint is pretty much all neutral colors. SO I did pearl + silver (which is a darker silver than the foil), but I also dotted a bit of blue alcohol ink on.

As you can see it ended up blending, becoming a bit too subtle too. That’s ok, I have a plan. First I die cut a snowflake out of him, then I sanded him lightly to get some of the foil showing back through. The sanding block worked fine for this – will be totally doing the technique again!

Ah but here’s where I wanted to keep kicking it up more notches. What I really wanted was more BLUE… but distress ink really ain’t gonna stick here. Oh wait – but I could cover it with UTEE and then it would be sealed in. (I know Tim talked about this in one of the tag posts)

But it wasn’t enough, so I did it again with distress stain and re-coated + re-embossed. Above you see the “before heat gun gets involved” version…

Now we are talking!!! I added some kraft paper + glossy accents inside/behind the die cut area and set frosty aside to dry…

Time for the tag. I just did the usual ‘put inks on craft mat, swipe damp tag through’ classic Tim Holtz technique. I then stamped a flourish with pearl dabber paint.

There wasn’t quite as much color on the background as I wanted so I “splatted” my distress stains a bit on there. Roll with it…

Bam! there you have it – my finished tag! The snowflake that got die cut is up at the top along with a metal charm I used snow cap + blue alcohol ink on (and then sanded). My trim was white – I used faded jeans stain + water to dye it.

Three tags into one, and in a way that is uniquely my own. *LOVE THAT*

I can’t suggest enough that you read up www.timholtz.typepad.com for ideas, tutorials, and videos from this series. It’s a seriously awesome Christmas gift from him that I enjoy every year now.

I just LOVE the color + texture I wound up with on this tag. Here are links to the supplies I used:

Happy crafting + creative play time!!