peace ... joy ... love: Day 2 ~ Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas

Yes, I know. I am running way behind with my 12 tags of Christmas already, but I did say it would take the whole month ... I wasn't joking!

I am entering this into the 'Christmas' themed challenges at Stamp With Fun and Creative Card Crew.

OK, so this is my version of Day 2, it should have been simple but it drove me crazy! LOL! Tim's version can be found here.

My problems started when I did not have an ornate frame (first ingredient) or anything close to it! My 'frames' were few and far between so after experimenting painfully, I finally decided that it didn't have to be a frame ... I could create a border instead.

I used Winter Border stamps from Inkadinkado. I'm not really overwhelmed with the whole process of using distress powder and then rubbing ink on and wiping it off. I like to have a clear cut image, I don't really like the vagueness that is the end result of this method. However, having said that, I am quite pleased with my overall end result.

I don't really like the dark red and green Christmas colour combo that TH used, but wanting to keep vaguely with it and knowing there would be gold in there, this is what I used.

Somehow it created an orangey effect which is much more my colour scheme.

The 'Peace Joy Love' stamp is by PaperArtsy.

I used the same flourish stamp (if it can be called that) as for my Day 1 tag, from Little Yellow Bicycle.

As you can see, I did not add a metal flower as I don't own any so created a layered paper flower but did add a Tim Holtz ~ Long Fastener to the middle. Couldn't bear to crush it with a hammer though, so didn't!

For the flicky gold bits I used Gold Alcohol Ink. It didn't create big blotches as seen on the TH tags but more of a fine mist, which for my tag I think I prefer. I don't know if this effect was down to the ink or the brush I used, as the brush seemed to absorb a lot of the ink.

My metal corners ... don't even talk to me about that! I didn't have the TH ones, but did have some PaperArtsy ones. Unfortunately however, they do not sit at 90 degrees, so however much I bashed them, they didn't sit true. So having hacked uselessly at the corners of my tag a bit to get the metal corners to fit, I then pulled them off and used my Round-It-All to make the corners look pretty again.

Thank you for looking.

Keeley

having a {me} day