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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.

In addition to a card making class being taught this month at Scrapbook Central Petone, I thought I would outline here some of the extra cards I made using the same Christmas Tree die used in class.

In the class (pictured left), the Echo Park Merry Christmas Tree die set is used, along with a chipboard set from Celebra8. The class covers ink smooshing, textured tissue and heat embossing to create these three bright and fun Christmas cards.

However, I have had a bunch of fun with the Christmas Tree die itself!

The die set includes the tree, a tree trunk, a die that cuts 6 round circles for baubles/ornaments, the star for the top and the Merry Christmas sentiment.

I really like the fun, whimsical shape of the tree, and the font of the Merry Christmas. It really is a great value set to add to your stash.

Firstly, I spent some time creating a couple of background pieces using strips of scrap cardstock from my stash. Whenever I create a card and cut down my inked, heat embossed and stamped panels, I keep the leftover pieces that would normally be thrown away, and store them to be cut into strips for times like this.

Check out how I store these scraps, along with general cardstock organisation ideas.

I pulled out all my green pieces and cut them into strips, about 1/4″ wide.

The plain green cardstock strips are basically of three different widths – 1/2″, 1/4″ and 1/8″ – glued down 2 each, dark to light, top to bottom.

I trimmed it down so I had reasonably even margins on both sides and the bottom and glued it to the top of the card base. I added a couple of pieces of scrap cardstock beneath for that extra dimension.

I cut trees from white cardstock, along with Merry Christmas in white cardstock with a gold glitter one on top. I added gold Nuvo drops to finish.

I cut down the bright striped panel using the mid sized Pinkfresh Studio Elegant Banner – such a pretty shape!

I also cut the stitched larger banner in white to sit behind the green striped panel for gentle added interest. I did lift the green panel with some scrap cardstock for that extra dimension.

I cut three white trees and glued them together. The die set includes the star which I cut from the same gold glitter cardstock used as strips in the background. The sentiment is from Lawn Fawn “Say What Christmas Critters” – used in last year’s Christmas Tag class.

I think this tree is perfect for Christmas Tags – and you know I LOVE tags!

I created a striped background on a smaller piece without the gold glitter and cut the tree from it.

I simply added the tree onto a Lawn Fawn tag, along with a white Merry (stacked three times for dimension), a gold twine bow and a white ribbon on the top for finishing.

This was FUN to do! I wish I took more process pictures, but I will try to explain how I achieved this finish.

I smeared some Rustic Wilderness Oxide ink onto my craft mat and anda dab of white embossing paste. Using my spatula, I mixed the two together to create a green paste.

I glued two die cut trees together (actually the top one was of light green cardstock), added a scrap cardstock temporary handle, and smeared the green paste all over it – I found a solid spatula to be easier to use than a rubber one.

It’s a little hard to see from the photo, but I did add a sprinkle of Nuvo glitter whilst creating the branches, adding a pretty, shimmer to the tree. The glitter does need to be pressed into the paste somewhat to stick, so it’s easier to add this while working with the paste.

I clear heat embossed some Bazzill Pomegranate Splash cardstock with the My Favorite Things Christmas Words background stamp. I then cut three Pinkfresh Studio oval frames from white cardstock, and added them to the front. I slotted one of the leftover oval pieces into the frame and glued the tree inside, I coloured the trunk with brown copic markers.

In this one, you can see I had some fun colouring the die cuts with Copic markers. I also used the cute Echo Park Christmas Reindeer – I am in LOVE with this guy – he will feature in next month’s Christmas Tag class too.

For the background, I simply added white embossing paste over a Celebr8 abstract line stencil, not quite getting out to the edges.

I arranged the elements above a black strip with gold heat embossed sentiment, along wth a couple of cute wee gifts with gold ribbon. And probably went a little overboard with gems!

Not quite last, it turns out trees aren’t just for Christmas!

I went full rainbow here, and inked up each die cut tree with a Distress Ink – Festive Berries Carved Pumpkin, Mustard Seed, Mowed Lawn, Prize Ribbon, Salty Ocean and Wilted Violet.

I then clear heat embossed each tree with a fine floral stamp from Carta Bella. You could use any stamp you have in your stack for this. I wiped the ink away with a baby wipe, leaving a resist – the darker ink is trapped beneath the clear embossing, leaving a clear stamped impression.

Last one, I promise! For today anyway 😀 (Did I mention how much I love this tree??)

These strips are left over from a previous session I had – all coloured with Nuvo shimmer powders.

The background is created just like we did at the beginning, and the tree cut from it. I stamped directly onto the tree with back ink, an MFT sentiment, and a bow made with silver cord. A white ribbon finishes of the top of the tag as well.