12 Tags with Tim Holtz meets Ali Edwards December Daily

Every year I follow the tags that Tim Holtz makes as part of his "12 tags of Christmas" event. (It's safe to call it an event right? I mean for us scrapbookers, it might even be THE event of the season!) I love the artistry of his designs and being a card-carrying tools and technique junkie, well lets just say it's like giving crack to addict (Distress Crackle that is).

I also love Ali Edward's December Daily project, but my holiday season is usually pretty mundane. This time of year is typically my busy season at work, we don't have kids, and for the last few years, I haven't even bothered to decorate. *gasp!*

So this year I had an epiphany... what if I combine the Tim's Tags with Ali's December Daily concept? I mean after all, Tim doesn't do anything with the backs of the tags and they ARE are just BEGGING to be completed.

Thus my hybrid approach was born. *Que the chorus*

First, I designed some daily jounaling cards (a la Becky Higgin's Project 365) that I could print out ahead of time. This way, at the end of each day I could grab one to jot down what I wanted to record for the day even if I don't have time to make a tag. Some days they will be things that happened, other days will be things I want to remember or thoughts of the season. I printed them on some grid paper from October Afternoon because well, I had a scrap of it laying there and it fit in my printer. Yes folks, there are very scientific design choices happening around here.

Click to bigify.

Supplies: October Afternoon, American Crafts, KaiserKraft, Martha Stewart, Epson, Colorbox

Once those were printed and trimmed, I set to work creating Tim's Tag No. 4. I started with this one for a few reasons:
Reason #1 - I had most of the supplies.
Reason #2 - It snowed here on December first.

For this tag I pretty closely followed Tim's design, but with a few modifications. For example, I don't have a bird named Coco to share feathers with me, so I used some holly leaves cut out of grunge paper that were leftovers from some other project. I also wanted to work in the new October Afternoon Holiday Style line, so I introduced some elements from that line as well as Very Merry.

Click to bigify.

Supplies: Tim Holtz, Sizzix, October Afternoon, Making Memories, Copic, Ranger, Kaiser Kraft, Bazzill.



The holly on his hat was cut out of grunge paper using a Cricut. The awesome thing is that since grunge paper takes alcohol inks, I was able to color it using Copic markers. Now lets keep in mind that I'm totally a Copic novice. I actually only own them to recolor embellishments. So I was pretty pleased when these turned out quite nicely!

I also made a few modifications to the snowflake border. Since I didn't have any packaging to cut up, I used a piece of acrylic I had left over from cutting out my own acrylic album pages. Then, I wanted it to have the look of glistening snow, so I painted the backside with pearl paint. In hindsight, the pearl came out looking pretty metallic, so if I was to do it again, I'd probably use the Making Memories pearl white paint instead. It has more of an iridescent shine to it.
I think Tim said not to heat the acrylic, but since I tend not to follow directions well, I went ahead and did it anyway. Don't you like the texture it adds?

Have you been participating in the 12 Tags? Leave a comment and share a link to you tags with us!