Tag 12 - Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas

I REALLY disliked this tag on the screen at first...
But as it began to come together, I fell in love with it, big time!  I love the softness and the whimsical feel, with the classic sculpture feel of the fractured doll, and the metallic wings, offset by the softness of the tissue paper flowers.
Here's Tim's tag... Image from HERE

The background technique was really cool - stamping the tag, and layering it with crumpled tissue paper, to add a soft depth.  We had all sorts of trouble with the tissue paper flower (thanks Tim!), so we decided to go back to basics, and make a few tissue paper roses using the tattered florals die instead.
Here's what we came up with!

Mine is on the left (the little angel!) And Michele's is on the right. 
This is definitely one of those tags that is only fully appreciated in the flesh - so much detail is lost on the screen.
I was so sad that this was the last of this year's tags... Can't wait for next year to do it all again! :)
x Rita

Tag 11 - Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas

Tag 11 was my favourite on the screen, but turned out to be one of my least favourite.
I think the simplicity was what drew me to it in the first place, but when it's lined up against the other fancy tags, it just "loses it"...
Here's Tim's tag (which is much nicer than ours!) Image from HERE

Our gloss cardstock didn't take on thec colour as well, and as we didn't have shrink plastic or UTEE on hand, our holly and branch is a bit on the flat side.  Though it was still lots of fun - I especially liked the background technique - inking gloss cardstock with distress ink, and then flicking it with water to create a snow flurry effect. Just gorgeous!
Here's our tags for this one...

Still, a fun and festive tag!
x Rita

Tag 10 - Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas

Tag 10. and we're on the home stretch... though I really wasn't looking forward to the tags for 2011 finishing!
Here's Tim's tag... Image from HERE

The technique that is the basis of this tag is a must do.
Click on the link above to go through all the steps to do it - it's so amazing!
This tag is up there with my favourites!
(can I have 12 favourites?)
Here's what we came up with :

So vintage and pretty!
x Rita
(and yes, that was ME using the words vintage and pretty in the same sentence... I may be learning!)

Tag 9 - Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas

I LOVED this tag so much!!!
The depth and texture is just something else!
Here's Tim's tag (Image from HERE)

This is what we came up with :

The double layer of embossing just add so much richness and texture to the background, it really is beautiful!
x Rita

Tag 8 - Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas

Tag 8 was a bit of a headspin...  very Tim Holtz, not so much Christmas... but we'll run with the "steampunk Christmas", and just have fun!
Here's Tim's tag... (Image from HERE)

And this is what we came up with...

again, mine on the left, Michele's on the right.
a little bit of a curve ball, but lots of fun, no less.  The blending and layering in this tag is incredible!
x Rita

Tag 7 - Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas

Tag 7 introduced me to a new surface... Glassine.  It feels kind of like greaseproof paper - the really heavy duty stuff that they wrap car parts and bearings in.  Combined with alcohol inks, it makes for ultra textured leaves which are just gorgeous!
Here's Tim's tag - Image from HERE

Here's what we came up with...

I love the texture of the crumpled glassine!  Another thing these tags have been great for is teaching me to just "roll with it" as far as clustering and adding "stuff" goes :)
x Rita

Tag 6 - Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas

I'll be totally honest with this one... I was really NOT excited about this tag!
There's WAY too many colours for my delicate eyes, the fiesta of colours screamed "cheap mexican restaurant" rather than Christmas.  We both decided to tone down the colours dramatically for our tags!
Here's Tim's tag...  (Image from HERE)

Despite the colouring, it's a pretty cool technique - embossing metal foil, painting, sanding and then embossing with clear embossing powder to give it an enamel finish. 

I loved how ours turned out - we used $2 ornaments from Kmart, coloured with alcohol inks, and then embossed with clear embossing powder to give the enamel effect.  These turned out to be one of my favourites! 

Mine on the left, Michele's on the right. 

I think I'll be revisiting this technique to make my own page embellishments!

x Rita

Tag 5 - Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas

Tag 5 was by far the one that gave me the most grief.  By rights, it should've been one of the easier ones - but I wonder whether our heat and humidity caused dramas that we weren't expecting!

Here's Tim's tag - taken from HERE
We had a little bit of trouble getting the ink to release from the back of the acetate without taking any of the alcohol ink with it.  Staz On ink is terrible for this technique! We used Ancient Page ink, and got a decent result, but I'd like to revisit this one using the archival ink that Tim recommends.
Here's how we went...

 Mine...

Michele's...
I like the idea of the technique, but I think there was an issue with either our weather, or the ink we used. 
Definitely a technique I'm keen to revisit though!
x Rita

Tag 4 - Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas

Tag 4 was so much fun.  I think because our Christmas is so hot and sticky, the thought of an icy, cool, snowman building Christmas was just tooooooo refreshing!
Here's Tim's tag...  Image from HERE

sooo gorgeous!
Here's what we came up with - again, we didn't have the snowman die, so I handcut them from grungeboard with my trusty stanley knife :)

 Mine...

Micheles...  For some reason the photos show these as being really dark - they are nowhere near this dark in real life! :)
 I love the spotty scarf on Michele's - it's so fun and whimsical :)
x Rita

Tag 3 - Tim Holtz's tags of Christmas!

Tag 3 BLEW MY MIND!!! 
I had heard of Cut & Dry foam, but never had a reason to use it until this...
We got to make our own rainbow stamp pad!  And we got so excited we couldn't stop.... we ended up making lots of rainbow stamp pads to match different stamps :)  So much fun!!!!
Here is Tim's tag 3 - Image from (HERE)

This is what we came up with... we didn't have the same stamps or embossing folder, but that's where my motto kicks in... "Sometimes you've just gotta rock what you've got!"

Mine is on the left, Michele's on the right.  How cool is that stamp technique!!!
x Rita

Tag 2 - Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas!

Tag 2 was lots of fun... made me realise that reading the instructions that Tim puts on his blog is very important! lol!  We didn't have his reindeer in flight die, so we used the cute lil reindeer from the Cottage Cuts die.
This is Tim's tag... (Image from HERE)

And here are mine and Michele's efforts...

 Mine...

 Micheles...
This was a great tag - The background is coloured using the white (picket fence) distress stain, and then distress inks to add colour over a kraft background.   I love the shimmer that the misting gives (we used glimmermist), it adds a magical air to the little reindeer!
x Rita

Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas - Tag 1

Michele and I decided to play along with Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas this year - It was a whole lot of fun, and I can highly recommend this as a mojo-finder!
Basically, the gist of it is that Tim Holtz *if you've been living under a rock, Tim Holtz is a major designer for Sizzix & Ranger - his style is grungy and very vintage/shabby and detailed* does a set of 12 tags each year, one a night for the first 12 nights of December.  They all share a festive theme, but he goes through so many different techniques with each tag that they are a very steep learning curve!  (In the best possible way!).

So first of all, here's a pic of Tim's tag (taken from HERE)
Then Micheles and mine... we tried to improvise on the pinecone die but failed miserably...  we substituted for some cute little roses instead :)
There's lots of things that we didn't have to do this, but we did what we could, and substituted items where it was necessary (and cut lots of things out by hand!)

 Mine :)

Michele's :)
This one was a good one to settle me into the whole Tim Holtz thing...  I'm a bright, fun kinda girl, I love to add lots of glitter and bright elements, so the glitter side of this appealed to my girly side.
I loved learning the technique for the background, that was mind blowing! 
As we didn't have the "Noel" die, I hand cut the titles from grungeboard, and was pretty happy with the result.  We edged our letters in brown paint to make them "pop" a little more, as we both agreed that they got a bit lost on the background - our glitter was slightly coarser than Tim's, and our background came out a bit whiter, so the silver glitter didn't show up as well.
So much fun!
x Rita

Sally's Advent Calendar

I made this Dusty Attic Advent calendar up on commission for Sally - she wanted a very traditional colour scheme, so we went with Kaisercraft Silly Season, but picked out any of the pink elements.  It was so much fun to do, and the finished product was just GORGEOUS. It broke my heart to send it to it's new home! 
Though it made my heart very happy when I heard that Sally's daughter was amazed that Santa comes EVERY NIGHT to leave a chocolate in the little drawer, just for her <3.  Kids... you've gotta love their outlook!
x Rita

Jo's Cards

Our very talented Design team member Jo did this gorgeous set of cards for us!
She features the Bo Bunny Father Christmas Collection, which is just beautiful!

You can click on the photos which will bring them up to be much larger too :)
Don't forget Scrapbook Shenanigans has 25% off all Christmas stock in the lead up to Christmas - grab a bargain now, and get prepared early for next year's cards!

Oh Dear!

I set a stack of posts to automatically post and for some reason, blogger ate them! 

Anyways... back in the saddle... :)
I'm just going to do a big gallery here of a stack of photos of my cards rather than organising posts to be auto posted. 

hope that got your creative juices flowing!
Happy Scrappin!
Rita