Hurry up, it's Hogmanay!

I've been so enthralled with building my holiday village over the last few weeks that I never got around to making my December tag for The 12 tags of 2015, and tomorrow it would be too late because it's Hogmanay today. I live in Scotland and Hogmanay (the last night of the old year) is traditionally a bigger event than Christmas in this part of the world. But my friend Cheryl sent me a message yesterday demanding to know where December's tag was. So here it is...

The burlap panel is Tim's and is inked with DecoArt Media shimmer mister in turquoise, using Tim's Christmas stencil.  I wanted a blue theme to go with my vintage baubles.

Cheryl sent me some die cuts recently, including this Merry Christmas, so that was perfect for this tag. I coloured the white card with peacock feathers distress ink and used vintage platinum glitter dust to add sparkle to the snowflake. I raised this up on sticky dots to give dimension.  

I didn't have the dies that Tim used to create his wreath but found a length of wired holly and used that instead. The pale aqua rayon ribbon I didn't grunge up this time, just made a triple wrap bow so it was fluffier, and the tiny baubles are vintage ones I had in my stash.

And, guess what. I finished ALL the tags for the year, so that's the one and only new year resolution that I managed to keep!  Here's a picture of my tag board. 

October tag is in the White frame to the right, displayed with all my Tim goodies that I was lucky enough to get from Tim because he liked my witchy tag so much. Still can't get over that!

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Can't wait for the 2016 tag challenge, but that will only be until tomorrow. Happy New Year!

Spring has a Sprung

Wow! What a fabulous Easter weekend it has been with wall to wall sunshine and soaring temperatures. I can't believe that on Tuesday it was snowing, and absolutely Baltic, but 4 days later it was so hot in my garden at 5.30 pm that I had to go indoors to cool off.  The down side is that I'm working this week and I chose NEXT week to take a holiday, but the weather is due to change.  Pah.

I have a tip to share.  I hate having to shake my half empty glue bottles to get glue to the nozzle, such a pain and doesn't help my dodgy shoulder. But, during a kitchen clearout last weekend I came across a couple of egg cups that are made from coiled wire.  I think they actually came out of Xmas crackers a couple of years ago but have never been used.  I had a eureka moment, gave them a tug to stretch them out, and now they hold my upturned glue and glossy accent bottles perfectly.  No more shaking the bottle.  You often see these eggcups in charity shops, so have a look for them next time you are browsing.

So, Time for Tim's April tag.  I've skipped the March tag as I didn't have what I needed to complete it,  will get back to it shortly, but Aprils tag was something I could tackle despite not having the stamps he used.  I had to hand draw the flowers, and didn't have the word dies, so improvised.  I also drew in the stitching as my cheap and cheerful mini sewing machine will be in the bucket soon if it doesn't shape up and behave itself.  I have a wheeled tool that puts holes in the paper as it turns, (have no idea what it is called but I guess it is for piercing stitch holes in leather) so my 'stitches' are nice and regular.

I drew bluebells on my tag, rather than the rose and daisy that tim has used.  To me, Bluebells are so Scottish, and just coming into season.  I like how my tag turned out.

Oops

Tim's February Tag.

Here we are, a new month so a new tag from Tim Holtz.  If it is February then it must be luurve.  

 Tim used ephemera pieces to cover his tag, and I did use a couple of those but mostly I have used cut outs from the Seasonal Stash paper stack. 

Work in progress.

I didn't have the metal foil frame for the felt heart so used a random chipboard one from my stash and silvered it up with some silver rub n buff.  If I was doing this again I would use the frame in portrait rather than landscape orientation as I don't like the space above it, and make the heart bigger.  I used the movers and shakers mini heart, but it's not big enough I don't think.  Another addition is the 'Passion' rub on from 7Gypsies, and as I didn't have a word band that fitted the theme I used a 'Togetherness' word stick that I've had in my stash forever but never used.  No idea who made it as I tend to take everything out of the packaging when I bring it home from the shop!  Bad habit if you want to blog about your endeavours....

The last step for this tag is to spritz the tag with distress pen spritzer to add some splatter.  I'm absolutely rubbish at this, can't get it to work at all, or if I do manage to get ink onto paper it's just in a small area and too heavy, not lightly splattered as it should be.  This tag has a blotch of splatter on the cupids, and not anywhere else.  GRRR.

Anyway, here's the finished tag.

I do like the wire wrapped heart on the arrow.

Cheers.

12 Tags of 2015 #1, January, and a NY Resolution.

Gosh, here we are in 2015.  Happy New Year everyone. 

New year, new tags from tim.  

I shamelessly copied this first one, with hardly any differences except for a couple of wee ones.  I had the alpha parts numbers and the chitchat stickers, but not tissue paper (stamped my own using white tissue paper and black soot ink pad, and various stamps) nor the distress glitter nor some of the paints and spray colours, so improvised with what I had.  The whole point really.  

Here it is on my tag board, at peg number 1.  I took off all the previous years' tags as can be seen by the faded areas on the board, but they will slowly be covered up as the year, and Tim's tags, 

progresses.  That's one of my resolutions, to complete every tag.  I started with good intentions last year but it didn't finish well.  :-(

I love the glitter on this one, luckily I had gold glitter that wasn't too brash.

And a close up..

I really like the shadow effect on the chitchat stickers. That's so clever.  It gives the whole tag depth.

I wonder what this year will bring?  Health and happiness to all I hope.

Cheers.