Tags from Christmas Past - part 1

Hello, all - hope your festive preparations are going well.  I've been unpacking my storage crate of Christmas and winter creations so that I can decide what gets to go on display this year... and it's not easy to whittle it down! 

(You can watch the unboxing over on my YouTube channel and see all of these as they emerge from storage - and hear a bit more about the products used.)

I've got a seasonal corkboard which can display 21 tags at a time, chosen to reflect the time of year.  Halloween/Autumn had been up for far too long, so it was time to make a change.  But I'm only halfway down the crate, and already I've got far too many to choose from... I sorted them into groups so that I could try to make more sense of them all.

There are the reds... 

There are the blues and greens and neutrals...

And there are the jumbo tags created from the 12 Tags of Christmas inspiration provided by Linda Coughlin, the Funkie Junkie, when she used to share a Christmas inspiration challenge in the weeks leading up to the festival... 

It's a little bit overwhelming seeing them all together... and as you'll see if you watch the video linked above, we're not done yet!  

There are some non-tags in the crate too, and they'll be coming up next, and then there's an Advent set of 25 numbered tags for the final countdown.  

I'll aim to share those with you over the next week or so in the run-up to Christmas.

But in the meantime, which 21 would you put on your corkboards, if you had to choose?!  See you again soon for the next bit of unboxing.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy crafting, all!

Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.
Edna Ferber

It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees. They’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace.
Joni Mitchell

Stencil It - Guest Designing for Simon Says Stamp

What a joy to be in the Designer Spotlight for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this month.  Thank you to the whole team for having me.  I had a glorious time with all the challenge themes, but I think this last one may have ended up being my favourite of the lot... see what you think! 

This week's challenge theme is Stencil It!  I grab my stencils all the time, so this one was definitely up my street.

 

If you head over to the main challenge website, you'll see all the amazing stencilled projects from the SSS design team... with all the inspiration you could possibly need to join in this week.

I do love a brick wall, so for my featured stencilling I grabbed the Ranger Crypt Paste and put it through Tim Holtz's Bricked Layering Stencil to create a textured background for my autumnal gatherings. 

Some paint, a Pumice Stone Distress Crayon and Walnut Stain Distress Oxide all add to the distressed look of the bricks.   (I recently did a whole YouTube video on creating similar kinds of brick and stone backgrounds, so if you're interested in more details, take a look at that Few Minutes of Fun episode here.)

And over the top, what else could I choose but my very own berry stamps from the PaperArtsy Fodder Berry Edition?  These are the hawthorn berries, a lovely sprig, full of movement and twisty stems.

And these are actually Porcelain Berries but I decided to make them into unspecified red berries, to celebrate the autumn colour palette.  (Take a look at what colour they usually are here!)

I used my Tim Holtz stamping platform, so that I could re-stamp for perfect detailing after "painting" the berries.  

I think they look really luscious, painted with the Distress Watercolor Pencils.  It's so easy with the pencils to get a really detailed botanical look to your painting.

The leaves are die-cut from papers smooshed in Distress Inks, Oxides, Spritzes and Mica Stains, using the Fall Foliage and Leaf Fragments Thinlits dies.  

(Again, there are YouTube videos available on my Words and Pictures channel, both of the background-making, and of the die-cutting of all these leaves.) 

And the berries nestle amongst real twigs and flax seedheads from my garden.  It took a bit of juggling to get the arrangements to work to my satisfaction.

It can also be tricky to identify where you need to put your glue so that the twigs make contact with the wall and the berries make contact with the twigs.

But I think it's completely worth it to create these dimensional collage clusters full of movement and energy.

A few Snippets Ephemera - Curator labels and Number Strips add detail to the background.

I don't know where I would be without these brilliant tiny vintage labels... you can find them on almost everything I make these days.

And the words are from the Clippings Stickers.  I'm always amazed how somehow I always seem to find the perfect combination of phrases or ideas to fire off a story in my brain!

Sometimes, I have to be patient, because I do like to find ones which have a similar font and page colour to go across a pair of tags.  But in the end, so far, it has always worked out.

So I hope you like these tags as much as I do.  I think there are newer followers of mine over on Instagram and YouTube who didn't believe me when I told them my colour palette would be changing in the autumn... I know you long-time blog followers know better, but if you ever doubted it, I think these tags are pretty definite proof!  It's autumn!!

Do head over to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge for all the details of how to join in with this week's Stencil It! challenge, as well as to see the amazing projects from the Design Team.  I know you're going to love them.

Remember, you could win a randomly-drawn voucher prize for a Simon Says Stamp shopping spree, or you might get picked by the Design Team for a moment in the spotlight.

It's been a real joy to play alongside the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge inspiration team for October.  I hope you've enjoyed seeing the projects even half as much as I enjoyed making them.  And what a good way to get me posting a little more regularly here again!  

Watch out tomorrow for a really exciting post (yes, two posts in two days... it's almost like the good old days!).  Happy crafting, all!

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads...

Charles Dickens

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

Wendell Berry

Something Spooky (and Purple!) - Guest Designing for Simon Says Stamp

What a wonderful time I had with this week's challenge theme for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  It's such a thrill to be featured in the Designer Spotlight for the month of October, but to have this much fun into the bargain is a real treat.  Later this week, you can watch a whole YouTube episode on how these eerie moonlit tags came to life, but for now, I hope you'll enjoy these photos and a few details about the ingredients.

As always, the brilliant Monday Challenge team have created some amazing projects to kickstart your creative imagination, so do make sure you hop over to the challenge website to drink it all in.  The theme this week is Spooky/Add Some Purple... I ended up doing both!

I love adding a touch of purple to autumnal projects... for me it has that wonderful echo of both dawn and twilight in it.  Autumn has some of the best sunrises and sunsets, I think - certainly where I live in rural South Bohemia, right in the heart of Europe. 

And those crepuscular times of day have their own inbuilt eerieness, I think - so as soon as the Tim Holtz Moon Masks came out to play, the creepy element became inevitable in the gathering dusk.

My darkening sky is a combination of Shaded Violet and Villainous Potion Distress Inks, with Hickory Smoke, Lost Shadow, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Scorched Timber to provide the neutrals in the landscape, as well as extra shadows.

I added subtle layers of meadow stamping with the grasses from Tim Holtz's Nature Discovery stamps, as well as some of my own PaperArtsy Umbellifer Edition stamps. 

The background layers are stamped in Pebble Beach Ranger Archival Ink, so as to stay put if I'm adding any moisture later.  The Umbellifers are stamped in a secondary imprint of Scorched Timber Distress Ink (oh, how I would love to have Scorched Timber in an Archival formulation!)

(You can see the full process from Saturday onwards, when the A Few (More) Minutes of Fun episode goes live on YouTube - I'll add links here when that happens.)

But hidden away amongst the grasses and wildflower stems are some slightly unnerving objects... the gleaming white bones from the Tim Holtz Anatomy Chart stamp set, embossed in Wow Bright White embossing powder.

As if that weren't creepy enough, there are colonies of bats silhouetted against the moon(s)... courtesy of Tim's The Scarecrow stamp set...

... and more spooky winged things to brush against your face as you cross the meadow... the Idea-ology Halloween Moth Transparencies.  Beautiful, but definitely not pleasant when they're caught in your hair!

My word stickers are from an older edition of the Halloween Clippings Stickers...

... but you'll find similar ones in this year's Idea-ology Halloween Sticker Book.

I love how you always seem to find the exact right phrases (if you look hard enough and don't give up on a compromise option too soon!).

I mounted the tags on some white card, just to give them a bit of framing - and it helps the moon to pop... with slightly raggedy edges done with the blade of my scissors for extra texture.  And some fine twine finishes things off as usual.

Hopefully, that gives you some inspiration to start you off with this week's Something Spooky/Add Some Purple theme... If you still feel the need for a bit more, do hop over to see what the regular team at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge have been creating.  I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

As always, there will be a randomly drawn prize voucher so that one lucky winner can go shopping at Simon Says Stamp... and the Design Team will be featuring projects that catch their eye(s) (how's that for spooky?!) in the spotlight at the end of the week, so do come and play along.

I hope you'll have a grand time getting spooky and/or purple - I certainly did.  Have a great week, and happy crafting, all!

Moonlight is sculpture.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Oscar Wilde

Between our birth and our death we may touch understanding, 

As a moth brushes a window with its wing.

Christopher Fry