Hello Peeps,

Last year, my husband made our Christmas cards. Not the way I would have done, using stamps and patterned paper, but with a photo of our family wearing our Christmas sweaters. It was fun and we got some nice comments about it which is why my love wants to do it again this year. And all this while I have so many cute Christmas stamps in my stash. Oh well, if someone wants to make cards, in whatever way, I can only encourage it. So I decided to use my Christmas stash to make gift labels to further decorate our presents. I started by making these labels with these adorable Christmas elves.

I had stamped the elves from the My Favorite Things Santa’s Elves set with some Versa Fine Onxy Black ink ahead of time on some Crafters Companion Neenah Classic Crest Card in Solar White and brought them with me on holiday to colour them. Because I couldn’t take all of my craft supplies, I had to choose wisely. I took my Gelatos by Faber-Castell with me. I only have about 8 of them and they don’t take up a lot of space. With my waterbrush and a piece of kitchen roll, I was ready to relax and create. The colours I used are: Snow Cone, Acqua Dolce, Metallic Melon, Watermelon. Blood Orange, Margarita Mix, Raspberry and Squid Ink. I do think that I added a touch of yellow from my mini watercolour set to the bells, buttons and to the star on top of the Christmas tree. Once home, I cut out the images using the matching dies. Out of some Crumb Cake cardstock by Stampin’ Up I diecut 4 tag shapes with the Lawn Fawn Tag, You’re It dies. I cut the hole reinforcers from a scrap of Pool Party cardstock by Stampin’ Up. To give the labels some more interest I stamped an all over print on them. I used the ornament from the Santa’s Elves set for two of the labels and the gift for another one. I stamped a gift fron the Marianne Designs Joepie Geniet set on the fourth tag. On each of the tags I stamped a sentiment using VersaMark ink, which I covered with Pool Party embossing powder by Stampin’ Up and heat set it. The sentiments are from Clearly Besotted’s Sweet Little Sentiments and from My Favorite Things’ Ewe Are The Best and All About You. When I glued everything together using Tombow Multi Mono Liquid Glue, I ended up with these 4 gift tags.

Obviously four tags aren’t enough, which is why I wanted to use the stamp again, but in a different way. This time, I chose the paper first and coloured the elves in matching colours. It makes for a very natural unity by using an existing colour palet. It is a method I will definitely use again in the future.

 

The images from My Favorite Things Santa’s Elves were stamped on some Crafters Companion Neenah Classic Crest Card in Solar White, again, using VersaFine Onyx Black ink. I coloured the images with Distress Ink in the colours Candied Apple, Spun Sugar, Broken China, Tumbled Glass, Tea Dye, Wild Honey and Evergreen Bough. Once they were competely dry, I cut them out using the matching dies. The tags were cut from paper from a DecoTime Christmas paper pad with number DS481-04, once again using the Lawn Fawn Tag, You’re It set. This time I used all four of the dies. Because one of the compositions, was too far outside the edges of the tag, I enlarged the largest tag with some measuring and cutting to be slightly bigger than the original. I paid extra attention to the pattern, trying to keep it fluent over both colours of paper. This way it doesn’t distract too much from the cute elf on the foreground. By using a combination of Tombow Mono Multi Liquid Glue and 1mm thick foam squares, I managed to give the tags some depth without them becoming too bulky. I cut some of the plain hole reinforcers from a scrap op cardstock from my stash.

 

As you can imagen, I am nowhere near done, making gift tags for our Christmas presents. But it’s safe to say I’m enjoying making them. Next time I’ll show some tags I made uisng a different Christmas set by My Favorite Things?

Do you use tags to decorate your Christmas presents?

See you next time,

 

Leonie