During my hiatus I turned my attention to making my dwelling a homey place to live in. Something I neglected to do this past year. And to that end I’ve been doing a lot of re-organizing things all over the house and the craft room. I have to say being organized is not my strong point, but I’m working on creating new habits in that area of my life. Seeing that clear table gives me incentive to keep working on my ‘Get Organized’ goal.

So, have I still been crafting away, I hear you ask. You betcha!! I could not imagine not having something in my hands and creating a new thing. I’ve got a bunch of stuff up my sleeve to show you, if you want to come along with me. I started to broaden my horizons beyond just stamping and making cards last year, and I’ll be taking that a bit further this year. Don’t worry, I’ll still have lots to share, stamping/card making wise, but I’ve also got some fun ideas to share with you, including some of  my craftroom solutions for my ‘Get Organized’ mission.

For example, I’ll be showing how I crafted this chest of drawers into an altered  piece of furniture to store some of my supplies.

Would you be interested to see how I used these to create a handy stamp catalogue of my rubber stamp collection?

But first up I’ll be showing you the card I’ll be making for my mother. (No I haven’t made it yet) It’s her birthday this Sunday, so I’ll show it to you then.  That’s my mum preparing veggies for our Christmas lunch. Did I mention I had a great Christmas with my family? Not even they expected the Christmas transformation that came over my house. LOL. They said it got them right into the Christmas mood. And they loved the turkey I cooked up for them. Very happy.

Another past time I’ve rekindled during my break is treasure hunting thru secondhand shops. I found this little treasure and paid less than I would usually spend on one Stampin’ Up order! And I’ve added to my collection of doileys and vintage suitcases at bargain prices.  The day I bought this sewing machine was also my daughters 18th birthday. My work was cancelled for the day, so we spent the day scouring the local op-shops. She said she had a fun birthday, just hanging with her mum, shopping together. We definitely have to make some more dates to do the same again. Did anyone notice that bowling-ball sized red vase in the top photo? Found that beauty two days before Christmas and it made the perfect center piece for my festive table. Love op-shopping!

I had thoughts of using my down time to educate myself on how to beautify my very ordinary looking blog. That clearly didn’t eventuate and my poor readers are still left with a rather bland blog to look at. I’m sorry! Kudos to those who overlook this faux pas and keep coming back to read my posts. You deserve a medal, lol. If someone has any suggestions as to how I can get an un-nerdy education of WordPress, please let me know. Just don’t suggest Blogger, lol.

So what about the invite? The invite is to any of my local (to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) readers who may be interested in coming to a Stampin’ Up workshop, put on by the awesomely talented Kirsty Brown. I want to create more social opportunities and since I’m into stamping, thought this was a good way to achieve that. And since my motivation is social, I’ve decided to offer as door prizes any hostess benefits achieved thru the workshop. Any Brookfield Stamp Campers want to re-connect? Come on down! Blog readers? Don’t be shy. The details. Sunday 12 Feb, 10am , Crestmead area, RSVP 8 Feb 2012, limited to 10 participants. What to bring? Your amazing good selves, with double-sided tape and paper snips. Leave a message in the comments if you are interested and I’ll get back in contact with you, or if you know Evie Poole, you can contact her for my phone number. Or send me (Misstreez) a PM if you’re a member of Splitcoast Stampers.

That wraps it up for today. Feel free to drop in a comment to say hi, then I’ll know I’m not talking to myself, lol. Until Sunday, have a fun creating something new.

I’ve been scurrying around getting the house in order to create a lovely homey environment.  I live by myself, I work long hours,  when I craft I prefer to tinker away by myself, and I spend a lot of my spare time crafting. I could be a little  obsessed (unbalanced, lol) with crafting, but after a long day it’s a welcome distraction.  The down side of all that is that I’ve turned my whole house into a crafting room, so you my well imagine the tidying up I had to do! It’s lovely to come home to cleared spaces now. And as much as I love creating things with stamps and paper, it’s good to switch my focus back to the kitchen and engage my mind to creating a mini feast.

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As I was putting the last few things away from my 12 Tags of Christmas adventure, I decided to get the most out of  my custom ink pad that I made for tag 3. Yes I’m still lovin’ that stamp pad. I got nearly 80 impressions from it! It’s still good for another 20 I reckon, but I’ll call it a day with 80. I’ve got plans for all those stampings, so watch out for mid year when they make a reappearance.

And before I go, another thing I’d like to share, from my heart. Thank You, to my blog readers from earlier this year who hung in there and waited for me to return to crafting and blogging. The tumultuous events at the beginning of the year really left me wondering if I’d have the heart to come back to stamping, card making and blogging. To those of you who left comments during my abscence, it really did make a difference to ‘hear’ a voice calling in on me. Another Thank You goes out to my new readers. WOW! you have really spurred me along. To those inclined to leave comments, I’ve been inspired to improve my skills, crafting and writing. And to the quiet ones who pop in, I know you’re there and it makes me feel that doing this blog is worthwhile. So a big THANK YOU to all of you.

I’ll be taking a break from blogging for the next few weeks. I haven’t any set date for a return, but I’m thinking I’ll be quiet during most of January. But if you’ve subscribed to this blog you’ll get a notice when I return. And speaking of subscriptions, just in case you didn’t know, near the top right of this blog you’ll see a ‘Sign me Up!’ button for a subscription to my blog. If you sign up, you’ll get sent an automatic email, letting you know about any new articles I post here. It doesn’t cost a thing. Just thought I’d let you know  

So with that all said, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Enjoy the season! 

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I loosely translated Tims tag into a sketch, and went from there, making my tag with mostly bits and pieces I already had out in front of me. My background is a spare I had from tag nine.  The stamped woman was rejected for tag eight. The arch window, aka a bird cage, was a left over from another unremembered tag. And by now you’d be familiar with my many varied scraps of lace. 

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Lacking tissue paper, I made my tattered flower from lace, organza and prima petals. Lacking adhesive foil, I silver embossed the lacy diecut. And lacking imagination, I couldn’t think what to use for a sentiment. I tried a few different words, but nothing was really working for me, so in the end I left that space blank. If I had some other items at my disposal, I’d probably try adding mistletoe over her head and adding words like ‘Kiss me’. Or maybe a bright shining star overhead. But I was lacking those things as well. LOL. What I’m not lacking is another pretty tag to add to my wall. Wanna see!

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Ta da! This was so worth the effort and the messes I made, to create this colourful piece of art work hanging beside my dining room table. I’ll keep it hanging there even after Chritmas has past, until I start working on something else to replace it. Then I’ll archive it to the hallway,LOL.

Thank you to all my visitors and commentors as you followed me thru all my 12 tags. It was great to have you along as I shared my Tim Holtz inspired 12 Tags of Chirstmas. Maybe we can do it all again next year!

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Before I get into the shrink plastic part, I’ll just go over a few other parts of the tag, starting with the background. During this tag series I’ve had a chance to have a good play with White Picket Distress Stain. I used it again on a background stamp (Impression Obsession, Cover-A Card Damask) to get the white impression onto the green background. I love the soft faded look of the stamping. I’ve probably said that a few time already over the past few days, and I mean it. Love the look it gives.

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And this is what my tattered flowers die cuts look like when they have been shrunk in UTEE. Definitely a technique worthy of further exploration, and not a bad result for a first run at it. One of the good things about doing this tag series has been getting out the stuff I’ve had lying around my craft room for ages, but rarely used.

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Last weekend, one of my crafting buddies gifted me a package of chipboard numbers, so I put them to good use straight away. Since I had my silver paint out from the previous tag, I decided to use it to paint these numbers. I added several layers of embossing powder, and when it was nice and thick, and hot, I pressed my rubber stamp into it (the same stamp used for the background). Did you notice that in the top photo, the numbers look blue? Thats because I embossed with yet another two tone product from Lindys Stamp Gang. This time I used Angel Wings, a clear embossing powder with blue highlights. I can’t help but to hold it up to catch the light and see it change colour. Fun.

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One more tag to go. The tag wall is nearly complete!

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A quick look thru my stuff also revealed a distinct lack of Christmas themed papers. What can I say? I’m just not really big on papers or embellishments – but most of you knew that already, lol. As mention earlier I found my two buttons, and then I also found a scrappy scrap of Christmas themed paper, so I was good to go. I went with the blue theme this time, simply because I felt the wall needed an injection of a brighter colour.

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I made my hanging ornaments in much the same way that Tim made his, just with different materials. My foil was the plain old garden variety stuff found in the third drawer, and not the crafty stuff Tim used. I can’t vouch for kitchen foil ever making a good contact adhesion to the buttons, but since  these will never be handled I figured it was a safe bet that they’d stay looking like that for a good while to come. I made my silver ‘greenery’ by painting my leaf shapes, cut with Spellbinders, with silver paint. And since I was impatient for it to dry, I poured Silver Pearl embossing powder over the top and heat set it. I like the texture it created on the surface. You may have noticed that some of the leaves were stencilled onto the background and others were die cuts, layered on top for some added dimension. 

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I love making these cute little banners. They are very easy to hand cut as they don’t require straight, parallel edges. You may have noticed I used my new custom ink pad I made for Tag Three, to stamp my sentiment (Unity Stamp Co). I still thats pretty cool how that stamps up. Now if I was smart I’d stamp off a whole bunch of these before I clear my table away and use them on next years Christmas cards. And lastly, you can see I’ve used another scrap of pretty lace found in my stash.

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So do you agree, the wall needed an extra dash of blue?

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I just love that red distressing around the egdes of the tag. The background stamping was done with Impression Obsession Cover-A-Card Swirls. I also used Tims idea of using die cut letters to spell out my sentiment,  then added Glossy Accents to give them dimension.

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I went to Brisbane on the weekend, and the local Scrap shop had a lone jar of Rock Candy Crackle Paint sitting on the shelf. I’d seen Tim use this on a couple of tags by now, so I thought I’d give it a try. Oh my goodness! How have I managed to turn a blind eye to this product? I covered my cut out bird with the Crackle paint and left it to do its thing as it dried.  When dried, I rub ink into the cracks which really brings out all that cracked texture. I’ve often heard people say how they love this stuff, and now I’ve tried it for myself I understand where they were coming from. I have no doubts that I’ll be seeing the bottom of that jar.

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I just had to show you my shimmery gold green holly leaves. Once again, I used Lindy Stamp Gang products. I think this one was called a Starburst. What I love about these colours is the two toned effect you get as the light hits the surface. In this case, sometimes green and sometimes gold, but always shimmery. My leaves and branch were hand cut, and the berries are punched out circles with glossy accents added for shine.

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And lastly, here is the tag wall after the ninth day. Only three more tags to go.

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My new stamps, All About Today, are primarily journalling stamps about  months, days, and dates. But I liked the grungy look of them, so I stamped them quite liberally over the background. I kept to Tim’s colour palette, but went my own way with the stamping. I stamped the months on a strip of paper and used it in place of the film strip ribbon on Tims tag.

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I unearth the rubber image of the family portrait from my older rubber collection. It was made by Tuscan Rose, which unfortunately doesn’t make stamps anymore. This stamp was one of my favourites at the time and I’ve made a number of impressions from it. Anyways, I digress. I used this stamp very much the same way Tim used his gentlemen stamp, stamping onto grunge paper and cutting out. I found the labels in my stash that I’d forgotten about. I remember most everything I buy, but if it was given to me then I tend to forget I have it. These I won in a scrap hamper some time back. I used my new stamps to add the words ‘How we spend our day”. Love that vintage typeset font. Perfect for this tag. The brads, another forgotten item gifted to me earlier in the year, were coloured with alcohol inks.

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Some other elements from Tims tag I wanted to use in mine were the circles, pointer and the punch of red. I spotlighted the month and made the arrow with my new stamps. And the word ”Family’ and the date were stamped from Lifes Little Moments ( Ippity by Unity). I love how the word “Family” is layed out like that, because that gave me the large circle element I was looking for, and it fit the theme of my tag perfectly. The ’25′ is a hack of another stamp, but by gosh it works, don’t you think! And the brads at the top were also gifted to me.

This is one of the tags that makes me really happy. It’s a real make-do collage of images, and together they tell a little story. And I like all the gifted parts I was able to incorporate into it too.

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And here is the wall, two thirds the way done.

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I don’t have glassine paper so I substituted vellum to get the translucent look to my greenery. But of all the things I dislike about this tag, it’s the greenery ( die cut with Spellbinders). Maybe I’ll be able to fix the ‘problem’ when I finally understand what the issue is. I don’t think the bling helped, lol. Moving on, I wanted colour in this tag, which was added using distress stains and white picket fence on my craft sheet and swiping the tag thru the puddles. I just love the white picket fence for giving a soft chalky look to the inks.I also used the white picket fence stain to stamp my words onto the back ground for a barely-there faded look.

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I liked the angel stamp that Tim used on his alternate tag this day, and I wanted to stamp something similar into my background too.  I re-found this old gem. It’s a photo stamp of a cherubic looking child from Oxford Impressions ( La Bella Vita). I wasn’t sure how such a detailed stamp would stamp over the top of the inks with picket fence mixed it.  I was ready to embrace any imperfections, threw precaution to the wind and just went for it. Ink. ink. ink, stamp! Voila! It reminds me of an image transfer that has become part of the background. I think the picket fence addition to my colour mix might have something to do with the way the ink doesn’t layer, like you’d expect with using just regular colours, but instead sinks into the paper.

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I recreated the banner idea from the first tag to use on this tag. The stamp (Crafty Individuals) is a quote, and I must confess, with the tiny font I could barely read it!  But thanks to Google I was able to find out what it says.

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories

 and love of kindred, and we are better through

out the year for having, in spirit, become a

child again at Christmas time.”

A lovely quote to go with my little angle, don’t you think. I’ll be writing that onto the back of my tag for future reference. (Since making this tag several days ago, I’ve been to the optometrist and will be getting my first pair of prescription glasses. I can no longer go on in denial that I’m getting OLD and have vision and hearing impairment issues. LOL)

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And this is the wall after day seven. In real time there is only one more tag to do, since we are already up to day 12. I deliberately started blogging about my tags late, just in case work went into overtime and taking up all my daylight opportunities to take photographs. Looks like I had nothing to worry about on that score afterall. I’ll be adding a new post daily until the tag wall is full. Stay tuned!

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Here is what my finished tag ended up looking like. I don’t have tin foil for crafting and I was stumped as to how to use Tims idea for my tag. I looked around my craft room for something to use. I even looked thru my rubbish as I remembered I had a lemonade can in there – I’ve seen others use these cans for crafting – but I couldn’t find it. I even thought of opening a fresh can and empyting the contents ( I rarely drink the stuff but I have them in my fridge for the kids and guests), but thought better of that, lol. So after much thought I went with the Faux metal technique.

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But I didn’t just stop at the faux metal technique. Oh no – I had to play around with this for a couple for hours, experimenting with ‘What if…?” . What if….. after I made my impression into the silver embossing powder, I then restamped the impression with versamark, added a red embossing powder, then heat set to embed the words into the silver. Hmmm … not too bad.

And what if I wanted to give this an aged/distressed look?  How would I do that with a resist like embossing powder? What if…..I splattered some shimmer stains (Lindy’s Stamp Gang - Moonshadow Bronze) over the embossing, and very carefully melted the spots into the embossing. OH WOW! I’ve actually created the look of pitted rust marks into the faux metal! So glad I fooled around with making this, coz I think that’s kinda cool.

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Now I had my ‘metal’ plaque  finished I set about making it part of my tag. I kept to the metalic look through out. The background was spritzed with Black Orchid and splattered with Moonshadow Bronze ( both by Lindy’s Stamp Gang) and the pionsettias where embossed with the same glitter Red embossing powder as the faux metal plaque. I raided my button jar and altered some brads for added embellishment. As far as tags go, this is not the best looking of the bunch, but it was the most experimental, and that makes this tag a fun tag for me.

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And lastly – the wall!

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There was a learning curve with this technique. The first couple of attempts with lifting the alcohol colour from the base were a bit messy. So I cleaned my acetate tag (cut from packaging) with rubbing alcohol and started again with a clean slate, so to speak. Eventually I got something I was happy with and I was able to proceed with embellishing . I used a bold  pionsettia stamp to get my design onto the tag. It was fascinating to wipe away the solvent ink to reveal the clear images. The next thing I wanted to do was make a wreath embellishment for the tag

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The wreath was cut with My Favorite Things Decorative Doiley die, the circles cut with Spellbinder Nestabilities, and the Dove from Cottage Cutz.  Since the acetate tag was highly reflective, I wasn’t sure how I would go about getting the dove to outshine the background. Nothing like a good all over coverage of glitter to fix that problem, lol. I doubt I’ve ever used so much glitter as I have in the past couple of days. My house looks like a fairy has been thru it, but since I’m too busy with making my tags I don’t pay too much mind to it.

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And here is the wall with the fifth tag in place. It’s growing!