12 tags of Christmas - day 2

If you are a stamper, you are probably following Tim Holtz' 12 Tags of Christmas - his annual attempt to make you want everything that he and Stampers Anonymous sells. It's pretty effective, considering his taggy goodness is responsible for 12 TH distress pads and the whole set of TH Visual Artistry stamps living in my basement. However, in December, I really try to refrain from buying more stuff for myself, so I am attempting to do these tags without running out and buying everything he uses. If you are the type that has to buy everything, then these quickly become $20 dollar tags.



Here is the original. I cut my own tags out of a manila folder, and used stargazers instead of perfect pearls. I happened to have the frame stamp and the distress inks necessary, but everything else is improvised. I'm not that crazy about the sentiment I used, but that for into the process, I wasn't going to toss it and start over. The big money on the original version, and consequently the big savings on mine, is the metal bits. To buy the TH Ideology metal foliage and metal corners would cost you about $14, but I used the faux metal technique and a flower punch to make mine. I used a combination of gold and silver embossing powders partly for the distress effect (my silver melts at a lower temperature than my gold, and if I stop at the right point, I get this fun grainy effect), and partly for visual interest. I already have a lot of weird colors happeneing on this card, why not mix up my metals? Anyway, I cut the flowers the way he cut his, I curled the petals around a tapestry needle, and I used a pewter brad to hold the whole stack together. The leaves are petals cut from an extra flower. Tacky glue is very good for holding the bits in place.

I know this is the day 2 tag, but I haven't decided what stamps I'm going to use for the Day 1 tag. He has a black snowman on his.