You can find more of my Gift Tags from over the years by checking out #inkyandstampytags
I love the Simon Says Stamp Picture Book Reindeer – he really is a cutie. I featured this guy on a Christmas gift tag last year, and you can see that tag below too.
I cut out the tags from red cardstock, and the trees from green. PLEASE NOTE: The Hero Arts Paper Layering Pine Tree used here is discontinued, but I have linked a similar shaped tree below.
I coloured the trees using Copic Markers, flicking the colour from dark to light to give the tree some depth and texture. I then cut them all in half, straight down the middle.
Copics used for the Trees: G29, G09, G05.
I lined up the straight edge of the trees onto the edge of the tag, and heat embossed the sentiments in place. You can see I am using both halves of the tree, so no waste of any of my colouring efforts!
I gold heat embossed the little sentiments on either side of the tag, just to the side of the lower part of the tree.
I also liberally sprayed the tag with Gold Shimmer spray.
I cut and coloured the reindeer one at a time. One of the features of the Picture Book dies is that they cut all the pieces at once, although the antlers are a separate piece in this case.
Copics used for the Reindeer: R59, R57, R55, R30, R20.
The banner is from an older My Favorite Things Tag set, and I cut and glued the folds together and stamped the To & From on them. I used the banner as a guide for placement of the first part of the reindeer body and built him up from there in the centre of the tag. Once the reindeer was glued down, the banner was fixed in place right at the bottom.
I added black glaze pen to the eyes and nose details, along with Nuvo Ivory drops to the tree for beautiful baubles. I thought he looked a little underdressed, and the scarf in the reindeer die set wasn’t working for me (we have summertime Christmases here in New Zealand), so I found some tartan patterned paper and created a little bow tie.
The Picture Book Reindeer was featured on one of my gift tags last year too.
The tag is a Concord & 9th gift tag from the Sprinkles Turnabout set, cut from same red cardstock. The reindeer is also coloured with Copics and built the same way from the bottom of the tag. The little snowflakes (CZ Design) are white heat embossed to make a hand stamped background.
The Ho Ho Ho sentiment is from an old Stampin’ Up! set.
This completes my gift tag today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.
OK, I definitely went out of my usual comfort zone for this tag – not only are there no foxes here in New Zealand, I also strayed away from my favourite traditional Christmas colours by using the Burnt Orange. Luckily gold goes with practically everything!
This tag really is a simple one – mostly die cutting using products from Honey Bee Stamps, Taylored Expressions and Lawn Fawn.
I chose to use watercolour cardstock, even though I didn’t paint anything, because I like the natural texture.
I have listed all products used at the end for your reference.
How cute does he look all put together!
The Taylored Expressions Little Fox has two dies – one for the fox body and the other for the white accents – it cuts the two cheeks, nose and tip of the tail at once. I went through my scrap folder (click here to see how I organise my cardstocks and coloured scraps) and chose some burnt orange and cream cardstock. I did not worry about trying to colour those teeny weeny eye pieces, rather filled those tiny gaps with black Nuvo drops. I did colour the nose with a black copic marker.
I wanted my gift tag to have a little bit of a difference to all my others, and decided the Honey Bee Stamps tag set with a vellum centre layer would be just the thing. I realised two things through trial and error. One, best to stamp and heat emboss any images first, so I put his wee gift a little to the left, plus the To/From and my logo on the back. Two, liquid glue was difficult to get a smooth finish on the vellum, but Gina K’s adhesive dot roller worked best to adhere both white circles on either side of the vellum.
Lawn Fawn Winter Gifts
The little gift is from a discontinued Lawn Fawn gift tag stamp set – but search your stash for a suitable little gift image.
FYI: the tag die is still available, and was used in my Christmas Gift Tag Class – Night Skies Ink Blending.
I used the Large Lawn Fawn Wreath to cut the greenery sprigs from scraps of green cardstock found in my stash, and placed them leading out to the right. The little fox is adhered on top using little foam squares and liquid adhesive. I cut the bow from the Lawn Fawn Wreath set out of Gold Vellum and put it together using Glue Dots. A Glue Dot secures the bow to the top of the tag nicely.
I searched through my Christmas sentiment stamps – I do have all my Christmas stamps stamped out into a binder, making this easy to flick pages to find the perfect sentiment to fit. You can view my stamp storage and binders here.
I white heat embossed the sentiment onto black cardstock and cut them as thin as I dared! The sentiment strip was placed with a foam adhesive strip directly beneath the fox and the gift.
I finished the tag off with Lawn Fawn Gold trimmings.
This completes my cute little gift tag today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.
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.
Welcome! Today I am excited about a product in my stash which I want to share my success in using it with you – including the resulting cards. Plus, right at the end is my giveaway for you to enter – GIVEAWAY CLOSED – Winner: Grace W, NZ
We all have those dies in our collection – we saw something pretty and bought the intricate die thinking of all the amazing cards to be made. Only to discover yes they’re pretty, but also pretty labour intensive to get a complete and nice cut! I like to stack my die cuts too, making some of the card making processes verrrrry frustrating! I have constant battles with those little ‘ripped out’ corners or having to carefully run through again and again, and simply untidy edges after all the effort. Maybe it’s my cardstock? Do my plates need replacing?? Perhaps I need a whole new machine??? Or maybe it’s just me………?
I have to admit, I purchased the electronic BigShot Express earlier this year and I’m definitely loving it – it has handled intricate dies quite nicely, but now I have found something to really make intricate die cutting a BREEZE.
The Sizzix Chrome Precision Base Plate
It’s like a bright shiny mirror straight out of the package and I was hesitant to scratch up that pretty surface. However, I needed a pretty die cut for a card idea and I knew from past experience that there were a couple of tricky spots so I thought I’d try it out on the Chrome Plate. Well. One pass and all the little pieces just FELL OUT when I ran my fingers over them – didn’t even need my pokey tool. WOW.
So this morning, I got out the worst culprits when it came to die cutting – very intricate background dies from Avery Elle (waves), Crafter’s Companion (clamshell) and Simon Says Stamp (Heart Mandala). DISCLAIMER: There is nothing wrong with these dies, they just needed an extra shim, or a few extra passes through my machine to get allllll the pieces out.
The Sizzix globe is featured here, but I didn’t have time to turn it into a card today.
The Heart Mandala pieces came out so easily!
I ran them through on the chrome plate – out of habit I did two passes on my manual big shot – but I got the amazing result of the pieces simply falling out when I ran my fingers over them.
I haven’t even told you the best part – the chrome plate is just as shiny and perfect as when it came out of the packet – there are no scratches or indentations from the die cutting. WOW again!
PLEASE NOTE: The Chrome Precision plate cannot be used with the Big Shot Foldaway or Big Shot Plus. Also, it should only be used with intricate dies rather than those with large openings.
OK, I then had the fun of creating cards, so here’s what I did.
A distress oxide background and the Avery Elle Waves die.
Alcohol inked background with the Crafters Companion Clamshell die
Alcohol inked background piece with the SSS Heart Mandala die
I carried on die cutting my card front pieces.- each one is stacked at least twice, the SSS Heart Mandala is stacked three times.
I cut the Waves from a piece in my stash – I had a previous failed attempt with watercoloring using Nuvo Shimmer Powder Atlantis Burst, but it did result in a pretty coloured and shimmery piece, perfect for cutting up!
I used the Hero Arts Colour Layering Turtle along with the Thanks stamp and die sets. The turtles were stamped with a selection of mini ink cubes in my stash – I don’t own a complete collection of any particular line of inks and I have happily collected all sorts to experiment with. (I will link here to Jennifer McGuire’s ink swatching system to make it so much easier to select inks for colour layering from your own stash).
The blue turtle and seaweed are stamped with Catherine Pooler ‘It’s a Boy’, Gina K Designs Blue Raspberry and Ranger Cobalt Archival inks. The green turtle and seaweed are stamped with Altenew Bamboo, Gina K Designs Grass Green and Ranger Library Green Archival inks.
I fitted the turtles and seaweed on the card, stacked the Thanks with white and silver glitter cardstock and finished the sentiment with white heat embossing on a black strip.
The card is finished off with Studio Katia silver gems.
The Mermaid is from left over from my weekend of learning to colour darker skin tones in my goal to be more diverse in my card making (you can check out that blog post here). I thought she would look super cute sitting on the clamshell card front and I finished this card off with a sentiment from MFT Sweet Sentiments and Pretty Pink Posh Party Mix jewels in the openings – to match the colour of the alcohol inking behind.
PLEASE NOTE: I purchased my clamshell die from Simon Says Stamp fairly recently, but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore anywhere – my apologies if I got you excited about this die!
The Heart Mandala is quite a statement piece, and I kept the rest of this card nice and simple, by adding a silver and black birthday greeting and placed Studio Katia silver gems to finish.
That completes my cards today. Scroll down a little more for the GIVEAWAY portion of today’s blog! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.
Thank you for visiting my fledgling blog! I have this prize of the Avery Elle Waves Background die featured above, a slab of Whittaker’s Milk Chocolate (made right here in my own home town of Porirua, New Zealand!) plus a bunch of my Christmas Gift Tags so you will be all set for the upcoming festive season.
To enter, please leave a comment and follow my blog by entering your email address below (email address required to contact the winner!)
Giveaway is open worldwide to anyone who is 13 years or over. This giveaway is not sponsored, administered or endorsed by Instagram, Facebook or WordPress. Your information will not be shared with any other party. Please be aware that shipping delays are inevitable due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The prize draw will take place midday (NZT) on Saturday 20 June and the winner will be announced both here and on Facebook and Instagram.
I will do my best to contact the winner directly. If the prize is not claimed within 7 days, it will be redrawn on June 27, 2020 NZT.
If you are interested in card making fun, future giveaways, product reviews, where to get the best goodies or my upcoming classes please follow me on my social media channels:
20 to be exact! My daughter Stella is leaving her teenage years behind….
She has always been a fan of pandas, so a bit of artistic fun was had altering Bill the Bear from Honey Bee Stamps. I will show you below how I altered the stamp and coloured him up.
Before we start, I will point out that the background pieces I have used are from a previous alcohol ink lifting session – here is a link to Jennifer McGuire‘s blog (and video with lots of examples) showing this fun and incredibly easy technique.
I used the Lifted Ink panel on the bottom for the Panda card, and the top panel is on a bonus card featured at the end of this blog post.
I clear heat embossed the Simon Says Stamp Leaves & Berries stamp on my alcohol inked panel, spritzed with isopropyl alcohol (available from pharmacies). I then laid a piece of white cardstock on top and ran them through my die cutting machine (no dies were involved in this) – the ink transferred from the Yupo paper (top) to the cardstock (bottom).
This left me with two gorgeous inky backgrounds to turn into cards.
Of course, you can ink up any background panel you like, with any colours. Or even use patterned paper if preferred. The beauty of a black and white bear, is he matches any colour choice!
I stamped Bill the Bear on his own and marked out with pencil where I wanted to add the black markings to turn him into a cute panda bear.
Using my Copic markers, I used gentle flicks to add colour both from the bottom and from the top of the midsection. I started with C9, then added flicks of C7 and C5 to meet in the middle. This gives a bit of texture to his fur.
I then went back and started with 100 (Copic Black) and did a second layer of flicks, then C9, C7 and C5 again to add extra depth. The same was done on his legs and arms. I coloured his ears and eye patches with black and C9 markers.
Later in the project, I felt the line on the midsection of his tum was a little harsh, so I added further flicks of C9, C7 and C5 going downwards to soften it up a little.
I played with placement for my panda, and decided a frame with a nice large sentiment would work for this card.
I chose the frame (die cut and stacked three times) from Mama Elephant Snail Mail, and the gorgeous Oh So Many Birthday Wishes stamp from Picket Fence Studios.
Look at that smooth gold!
I heat embossed the sentiment not once, not twice, but THREE times (use your stamp platform or Misti for this). It is a complete sentiment stamp at a brilliant size to be a focal point on any project.
Embossing three layers of powder helps the sentiment stand out a little more from the colourful background. I love taking any opportunity to emboss multiple layers for impact and get that raised, but smooth look.
At this stage, I felt the panda needed a couple of accessories to make him look like he was actually enjoying the festivities. Bill the Bear stamp set does include a number of fun accessory stamps and they are aimed at the outdoorsy type with images such as log fires, honey collecting, fishing and even toasting sausages and marshmallows. There are even a couple of cute vest options and a bow tie to dress him up! As cute as those are, they didn’t fit the theme of my card today, so I did have to look through my stash for appropriate sized party type accessories.
The balloon string is tucked into the slit of his paw.
I added a balloon and a gift from the Ellen Hutson Bear Ware stamp set, and coloured them in bright red. I used R59, R29, R27 and R24. The bear die cuts little slits on the bottom of the paws, so it was easy to attach some crochet thread under his paw for him to hold his party balloon.
The gift is slotted in under his other paw. They are a perfect size to match Bill the Bear.
Final details are added, Nuvo Midas Touch gold glitter pen to the balloon and gift, glaze pens on the eyes and nose – I love the extra shine and sparkle this adds.
Double sided tape comes in a variety of widths from 0.25″ up to 6″ wide!
I use Art Glitter Glue for just about every thing when I craft, but I do like to use wide double sided tape when attaching my card fronts to foam and card bases. Sometimes inky panels have a bit of a kink in them, making them difficult to smooth out with just glue.
I put my tape as close to the edge and corners as I can, and this ensures an even adhesion with no bubbles along the edges of the panel.
Bonus Card
With the other inky panel, I decided to create this quick and easy card. I simply trimmed the panel down and adhered it to a card base with foam in between.
I cut the Mama Elephant ‘happy’ nine times – stacked three each and arranged them on the front with a tiny birthday sentiment heat embossed in white and added a few gems for sparkle.
This completes my festive party cards today. Thank you for stopping by! Below are links to the products I have used – some are affiliate links (not all) which simply means I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you when shopping. Thank you for your support – it means I can keep creating and sharing with you.
https://linkdeli.com/widget.js?id=f5e8378456858c916708
