

The My Favorite Things Holly Jolly Cardinals die set features in this year’s Christmas Tag Class at Scrapbook Central Petone, where we made this set of four tags.
Along with the bird die set, the class also features the Echo Park Reindeer and we used various foiling techniques, both with and without heat, plus a little bit of inking, stamping and heat embossing. Aren’t they cute?

As always, I like to make extra projects while I have the die sets out. I have previously made projects with the reindeer – you can check out the blog post related to the extra projects from my last class where we inked up tissue and created an array of Christmas trees – plus I will be teaching a fun little mini class featuring the reindeer on November 17th, pictured to the left.
The Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillside that the reindeer is standing on was also used in last years Christmas Tag class, and I will show a couple of those tags below here too.


We did foiling techniques in our class, and I thought I would continue the theme on this card too. This particular foiling technique is too time consuming for a short class so I will outline it here.
I used an Echo Park Holly stencil to apply Thermoweb DecoFoil Gel. The gel needs a good hour, at least, to dry – it goes from white to clear.
Once dry, place a piece of foil PRETTY SIDE UP on top of the gel, place in a parchment pocket and send through the pre-heated laminator. The result is the gorgeous shiny foiled leaves and berries background.
I die cut one of the birds from white cardstock and put it together. I grabbed the wrong colour wing (a piece cut from natural cardstock instead of white, whoops) for the bottom part whilst putting it all together, but I added gold sparkle pen to that part in the end, which I thought was a nice finishing touch. I did add an extra wing on the back to give the bird the look of being in flight.
I also cut an MFT Fab Foliage branch from green felt, and the Peace letters from the Tim Holtz alpha set, and arranged the pieces on a plain red cardstock panel, cut down to 3 x 4.25″ – leaving a generous frame around it so the shiny holly can still be seen..


Cutting from felt is another way to get use out of the dies in your stash – you can cut more than cardstock!
I built up a little bird from grey and pink felt – I glued the felt pieces onto a white cardstock bird base for stability.
I used matte gold cardstock for the beak and the little legs, plus black Nuvo drops for the eyes.
I cut the letters for Tweet from the Tim Holtz alpha set, and the sentiment from the MFT Bitty Birthday Wishes. The actual sentiment in the set says Sweet Birthday Wishes, but I omitted the ‘sweet’ in place of the Tweet.
I used the MFT Cloud Edge stencil to create a gentle cloudy sky panel – I used Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and a blender brush. I cut the panel down to 3.25 x 4.5″ and lifted it with a piece of fun foam for dimension.
I felt the bird was a little off-balance all by himself, and decided he needed a fun balloon. I didn’t want to add another colour, so instead I chose a darker pink felt from my stash and cut the singular balloon from the MFT Balloon Bouquet, plus a bit of grey embroidery thread for the string.


I couldn’t help myself with a bunch of cardstock colours – these guys look sweet enough to eat!
I used a range of Bazzill cardstocks – Cotton Candy, Guava Sensation, Sour Lemon, Natural, Spearmint Stick, French Mints and Ocean Breeze, plus a little matte gold for beaks and legs.
Again, I stencilled the MFT clouds with Tumbled Glass and a blender brush. I cut the panel with an MFT stitched rectangle. I cut a second plain panel using the same stitched rectangle die, then cut it down into a slim strip by placing the same die partway down (the stitched parts slot right in to the ones you’ve already cut).
I die cut the letters using the Memory Box Varsity alpha set three times from various colours to spell out Bird Day instead of Birthday, and stamped Happy just above.

And finally, I did use this reindeer on last year’s gift bags (I give bags of Gift Tags as gifts).
I used white texture paste and a Tim Holtz Holiday Knit stencil on the front panel of one of the bag pieces. I coloured the reindeer die cut with Distress inks, added gems to the antlers and a red gem for the nose plus details with a white gel pen and an eye with a black pen. I used a Lawn Fawn Fancy Wavy banner and heat embossed Merry Christmas from the matching Winter Wavy Sayings stamp set.
This bag is a Favor Bag die from Mama Elephant, but you could use any little bag, or create one using a WRMK punch board.


In this year’s tag class, we used two of the same products as last year’s tag class – The Lawn Fawn Everyday Tag and the Say What Christmas Critters stamp set. Although we only used the sentiments from the stamp set this year, it does feature some super cute critters, the perfect size for gift tags.
Here are two of the tags from that class, where the technique was all about ink blending with Distress Oxide inks to get some pretty night skies – colours used for these tags were Blueprint Sketch, Chipped Sapphire and Picked Raspberry.
We also used the Lawn Fawn Stitched Hillsides (also being used in my next Christmas card class shown at the top of this posts) cut from white cardstock and vellum for the critters to sit on a snowy white hillside.
The critters are coloured with Copic Markers, and the sentiments are gold heat embossed.
Also shown on the tag are the Lawn Fawn Mini Snowflakes, cut from gold glitter cardstock.
I did a little write up about last year’s tag class, plus Bonus Projects using the Lawn Fawn Say What Christmas Critters – click here to view.
Thank you for stopping by my blog today! Happy crafting!
For more in-depth information about the best value supplies for your craft table, from cardstock to the handiest tools, check out my Best of the Basics series.
Articles in Best of the Basics Series:
Adhesives Cardstock Ink – Stamping Die Cutting Machines/Trimmers Heat Embossing Colour Handy Tools
Tour my craft room – you can check out how I store my stamps & dies, inks, tools, cardstock and pretty colourful things too!
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