Tags

Just like many of you, sometimes I have to do warm up exercises to get my creative juices flowing. Journaling, finishing up a half done project sitting on on my table, or as I am showing you here, making tags.

Yeah!

Quick little mini-projects that get you rolling and if they end up disasters,

who cares?

I had a hard time getting into  Christmas projects. Now that I am into them, I am on a whirlwind of holiday art craziness. But back before Thanksgiving, it was a tough switch over from fall to glittery holiday fun.

So I took out some tags and some stamps and just played.

I even took one tag I made and added it to a base and made this simple card.

Now I know these aren't these fancy tags- like some of Tim Holtz's mini-masterpieces. But they're not meant to be- their warm up exercises that I am quite pleased with.

So what are your warm up exercises?

I also made another discovery while trying to get into the holiday art spirit this year.

I need a bit of mess.

I had cleaned up my studio after the Halloween blitz and man,

I just found myself frozen.

Like the white page syndrome- which normally I can just make marks on a page and get rolling.

But a clean space...

I had to make a mini mess.

Now I also know that if it gets too messy-

I am just as stuck. Frustration kicks in when I can't find things.

Funny little personal quirk.

Now that I have been on a holiday art bliss,

the mess is HORRIBLE!!!!

I have 2 weeks off at Christmas and I am hoping after the Christmas frenzy wears down, I can CLEAN! PURGE! and get ready for a creative new year.

Do you have any art plans for the new year?

Or maybe any Holiday Projects you're finishing up?

Enough of me chatting.

Have a super day and hope you'll be back soon.

From the archives

So today I have a couple of tags from the archives to show you. I have some new work to photograph and post, but at this time of year, getting the right natural light to take decent pictures  is hard. It is dark when I leave at 6:20 for work and dark enough by 4 p.m. not to be able to get a decent shot. Hopefully this weekend I can squeeze in enough light to get those photos taken.

I love this tag on the top here-love the black and white background (Tim Holtz/Stamper's Anonymous) and how it is so much like a vintage newspaper add. The flower is Darcy's and the card is from October Afternoon. By the way- have you seen that October Afternoon offers Santa Sacks on their blog? Pretty good deal if you don't mind taking a chance to see what you will get. 

This tag has green inked background and some dark green pine images stamped (also Tim Holtz/Stamper's Anonymous). Then I embossed some heavy clear plastic packaging.  Snowflakes they are die cuts from Cheery Lynn Designs and the ornament is from Sizzix. I added the 2 punched deer (Martha Stewart) and the gemstone heart and the little oval die cut (Sizzix) with the word stamped on it.

So last night's hockey game was SOOOO painful. Maine got a goal with 5.8 seconds left in the game to tie 2-2 but then the refs disallowed it as they said there was interference and contact with the goalie. Didn't look bad to me...(OK, I am biased), but it was one of those emotional roller coasters-from an exciting high thinking we would go into overtime to down in the dumps when we lost. Another game. Sigh! Maine is doing so BADLY! this year. And we made the NCAA's last year. Goes to show you how little it takes to change the results.

One a happier note-we are heading out to get our Christmas tree today. It is COLD!!!!! Brrrrrrr! Will bundle up but will be a nice way to spend a cold Saturday afternoon and evening, drinking tea and putting up our tree in a nice warm house since the wood stove is cooking away.

You know it is suppose to be in the 50's tomorrow? Can't even hit 30 today.

Once again- just like with hockey games, it doesn't take much to change the way things go.

Stay warm.

Have fun.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Winter is Here

So we have made it past hump day and yesterday was one crazy day. Icey driving to work- I think the Seacoast had it the worst. They closed routes 101 and 95 for a while because of so many accidents. Then the kids had a delayed opening so we could have our teacher work morning (which should have been canceled and delayed for us too since the roads were so bad) and of course it was still bad when they rolled in so plenty were late and of course with vacation and Christmas almost here they were NOT in any mood to do any work. Or at least some of them weren't. I think vacation/holiday mode is setting in! (OK, so its been in and I am just finally realizing it). I have decided I am not going to fight it anymore since it is past Wednesday and I am going to go with that flow.

Whereever that takes me.

And they are saying some snow Friday morning and I am actually HOPING for a snow day. A little glimmer of hope maybe for a bit of time off before the Christmas committments actually start. And maybe we'll have a white Christmas- after all this is New Hampshire. Most likely it will be nothing much of anything, but school is out at 11:30 and even though we are off to dinner with my in-laws that night- it doesn't mean cooking or cleaning.

My kind of holiday get together!

So the project for last night was to make an ice cream pie for my Christmas day dinner. I used Trader Joe's Vanilla cookies to make the crust, Spumoni Ice Cream and Nutella. Can't wait to try it.

And here are 3 holiday tags I've made recently. They also are wintery tags-since today is offically all day winter.

This tag was inked with red, brown and mango colored ink. Then I use white pigment ink and stamped the snowflakes (Tim Holtz). I used an old book page to die cut the snowman (Tim Holtz) and stamped a couple snowflakes in black on him, and then after glueing down the snowman I used a white with gold Stickles mix and spread it over the whole entire tag. Once dry I added the music paper tape (7Gypsies), 2 leaves die cut from the Spellbinder's poinsettia die and then distresed with brown ink and a Sakura jelly roll sparkle pen, the die cut snowflake (Cheery Lynn Designs) and the ticket which is a Unity stamp stamped in red ink on white, then colored and distressed with more mango ink. Finally, I stamped the words (Hero Arts).All these tags are photographed on white paper which you can see around the edges.

Here's a really wintery tag which I love. Good for the this time of year when the sun only pops out for such a short part of the day, and this tag does feel very dark, I used midnight blue Memories ink all over the back of the tag to start with. Then I used white pigment ink to stamp the snowflakes (Tim Holtz). I then stamped the trees (also Tim Holtz) with Versamark and used black embossing powder. After that I added some 7Gypsies striped paper tape which I promptly brushed with some Viva Silver Paint Pen. I stamped the words on some off white tagstock-(I think Hero Arts) and glued it down, then added 3 dots of the same silver Viva Paint Pen on either side of the words. Finally I die cut the snowflake (Sizzix) in some of Ranger's sticky back metallic paper (???) and added that.

Finally something cheery and fun. My little eskimo girl made with a Basic Grey stamp. She is stamped on off-white paper, colored with Copics and cut out.

 I set her aside until I completed the tag itself, which is made by first stamping this Toybox map stamp of the Northpole and then inking the tag with some bright pink ink-but rather a distressed inking. Then I added a small strip of watercolor paper which was sprayed with Tattered Angels-I actually made a bunch of big sheets of sprayed paper which I can now cut out and use. Then I added a small strip of silver tape over that paper seam. I attached the snow girl. I added the white felt snowflake and then burshed some white and silver Stickles over that to make it sparkle and added a big clear plastic gemstone in the middle. Finally I stamped the words-I think an old AMUSE stamp, and then I used my Sakura Jelly roll glitter pen over the inked saying to give it a bit of glittery sparkle too.

That's my art for today. I am off to another day with the BIG kiddies-and I bet they'll be getting more wound up today.

I also need to clean my classroom today too! It's a mess.

Enjoy!

Stay Sane!