Tim Holtz 12 Days of Tags -- Day one

I know I'm a bit behind the times with posting my first tag for Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas. You can find his gorgeous creations here. I understand he is getting tens of thousands of hits every day. This is the third year he is presenting Christmas tags for twelve days. Today is day four I believe, but I just finished up my tags for day one.

I used distress inks in Faded Jeans, Broken China, Weathered Wood and Concord Grape. I use wax paper for the misting technique, it works just as well I think, as any other extremely smooth surface, when you're done, just crumple it up and toss it away. This is the first time I've used the distress crackle paint, kind of cool! I like it. However, I took his instructions too literally and really spread the stuff on thick for my first tag attempt and the paper could not hold that much moisture, it curled up and couldn't be salvaged. I wouldn't say spread it on like frosting, I'd say spread it on with a generous hand but don't make the layer too thick.

I didn't have a snowman image to use, as was illustrated in day one's example, but I like the Magnolia image with these color. I embossed it in black first, spread a bit of white over the entire image, then colored in lightly a shadow on the wings and the skin and face with prismacolor pencils. Then I overlaid frosted lace stickles on the wings. I also used the frosted lace stickles for the icicles at the top of the tag. Used grungeboard pieces painted with Stampin' Up's new platinum paint. The flourishes and snowflakes in the background on both tags were made using an Inkadinkado set.

Second tag I chose these Impression Obsession candy piece. Its a nice, large stamp and suits a tag pretty well I think. What I liked about making these tags is that you can think outside the boundaries of your paper, it expands your space, you're not mailing it like you would a card that has to squeeze into an envelope. For the candy, I also didn't choose to leave the images starkly black and white, but colored the candy pieces with two different shades of blue of Twinkling H20s, put on a fine layer of glue and then SU's dazzling diamond glitter. The snowflake embellishments are clear plastic, I think I bought the pack at Michael's two years ago. The 'joy' sentiment is from Papertrey Ink Believe, stamped in silver craft ink and embossed with silver tinsel EP. I notched the edges of the black paper and then brushed the edges with a silver gel pen. Thanks for looking.