Snow Flurries

Hello all... yup, I'm back again and, believe it or not, it's tag time.  I know, who would have thought it, eh?

I'm up to my seventh tag for the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas.  That's a whole week of daily postings after one of the quietest years on Words and Pictures.  At one point I was worrying I wouldn't manage 100 posts this calendar year but, thanks to Linda's tags, I am going to make it after all!

This is my version of her Tag 10 and it uses one of my favourite ingredients, corrugated cardboard.  If you check out Linda's original, you'll see that I've trodden pretty closely in her snowy footsteps, but headed off in slightly different directions occasionally.

For starters, my kraft card seems to be a darker shade than the one Linda is using, so that changes the look of things right from the get go.









And I did try a bit of stamping with the Glacier White pigment ink pad.  I don't know whether I've got a dodgy pad, but I don't seem to have much success with it.

Instead, I followed my favoured method of white stamping and "painted" a thin layer of Fresco paint (in Snowflake, appropriately) onto the craft mat and used that as my "ink pad" for stamping.  The DecoArt Chalky Finish also works really well for this.

NB - As Helen rightly points out in her comment, you have to clean your stamps really quickly after stamping.









I don't have Wendy Vecchi's polka dots, and I've already played with my Artistic Stamper dots once this challenge (for Tag 2 Oh Deer!).

Since one of my main reasons for doing this challenge is to remind myself of the contents of my craft stash, I picked out my almost unused W.V. Spatter Background and used that to create a real blizzard on the tag.









I do, however, have the large Weathered Winter snowflakes from Tim Holtz, so those got the same paint-stamping treatment.  Now the blizzard is even stronger...

I inked around the edges with Vintage Photo and then Ground Espresso, and moved on to the foreground elements.









No problem locating cardboard in the craftroom... the wall under my table is lined with flattened boxes awaiting use.  It's quite good extra insulation!

I tore a panel and used my finger to smear on some gesso, just as Linda did.













My layered snowflake has all four layers, cut from kraft card and roughly edged with gesso.














And it's sitting on top of one of the gorgeous Calico Craft Parts holly corners.
















Well, they call it Vine and Leaf... at Christmas, I call it holly!

I had planned to go with the chalkboard look for my sentiment, but looking at what I'd assembled so far I decided I'd rather go with an echo of one of my own earlier tags.  So I recreated my word panel in the same way as for Tag 9 Pine Cones Galore!












I even started following in the steps of Linda's creative process, gazing at the tag and feeling it needed something more, but unsure what.  In the end I reached for the rub-ons, and added some extra snowflakes in dramatic black.














They featured on Tag 2 Oh Deer! and I mentioned then that I always forget to use my rub-ons.  This Funkie Junkie challenge is really good for making me "shop my stash"!








In fact, I notice I've reversed the additional adornments on the last couple of tags.  Linda went for rub-ons on Tag 8 and die-cut snowflakes on Tag 10, and I've gone with rub-ons for this Tag 10 and die-cut snowflakes for Tag 8 Tis the Season.  See, I'm channelling the Funkie Junkie even when I'm not channelling her!

So there we are with my seventh offering.  It's a grim, grey day for photos today and this one could have done with some brighter light to warm it up - though that would melt the snow, of course.

I'm off to see if I can get some decent photos of the other ones I've finished, and then back to the craft desk for the final push.  While I'm busy with all that, there's actually a non-12-Tags post tomorrow... I know - shock, horror, right?  I hope you'll stop by to see what's afoot tomorrow evening.  See you soon!



Silently, like thoughts that come and go, the snowflakes fall, each one a gem.
William Hamilton Gibson

I'd like to share this as Tag 10 in the Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas, sponsored by The Funkie Junkie Boutique
I'd also like to enter it in the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the theme is Let There Be Snow