Thank you for joining me on this the last day of our 12 Tags of Christmas with a Feminine Twist! I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for visiting these past 12 days and a huge thanks to all of the oh, so talented women who contributed to the success of this year's tags. THANK YOU Julie, Jennifer, Kittie, Kelly, Julia, Jean, Jill, Dawn, Sandy, Heather and Sharon! This would not be possible without the amazing ideas you each have shared over the last 11 days - it was like opening a Christmas present with the reveal of each one of your beautiful creations! THANK YOU!!
Some of you may have seen my post on Instagram, but I wanted to take this opportunity to once again share my thanks to my team here at work in this post. The women who work here at Ellen Hutson LLC are truly incredible women - I am so very blessed to have them in my life! Last weekend they gave me a gift like none other - they came to work over the weekend and decorated the office for the Christmas season AND they unpacked the boxes from our move LAST fall, putting things in place and cleaning my studio! Needless to say I cried - you know that you are loved when others will come to your rescue and give so freely of themselves. The gift I received that day will never be forgotten --- I was able to walk in to my studio this weekend, to sit down and create in an environment with no distractions - it was a much needed reprieve from this crazy hectic world we live in!
HUGE THANKS to you all!
I have to admit being lost creatively because it has been so long since I have been able to sit down and create. So I started going back in my memory bank to creative endeavours I have pursued throughout my life and tried to tie those in to current trends. I decided to play off the "messy string" trend we are currently seeing and go with a more traditional "string art" concept for this year's tag. I am going to date myself when I share that as a young teenager I created a fabulous ship string art piece - LOL! As I was sitting there thinking about how I would create this project it also dawned on me how fabulous a simple "wood-burned" look would be and so I decided to create a his and hers look with the Real Wood Birch we have in the store.
To begin I created the little "string art" circle to place behind the cut out stag.
Cut a circle of Distress Watercolor Paper and apply a combination of Tumbled Glass and Peacock Feathers Distress ink to the surface. Dry.
Cut a coordinating circle of Sookwang tape from a Be Creative sheet to apply to the back of the Distress Watercolor Paper. Remove the backing from the Sookwang tape and begin to wrap the string starting in the back and working clockwise around the circle until you have covered the entire surface as shown above.
Before beginning you will need to determine where the center of your string art piece will be placed - do you want it to be hidden or part of the design? I created a template from plain cardstock to use as a guide. You will see it in a photo below. You could also just do a very "messy" look by randomly wrapping the string - there are SO many options to play with when trying this idea!
As you can see in this photo the start and the end of the string is on the back side. The beauty of the Sookwang tape is that the string "embeds" into the adhesive surface when pressed in place and helps avoid movement of the strings.
As you can see in the photo above I elected to hide the spot where the threads meet behind the paper surface, but I have to admit it looked ubber cool when it was all gathered at his nose as well :)
Adhere Sookwang tape to the backside of one piece of Real Wood birch. Cut 2 tags (one that has adhesive and one that is plain) from the Real Wood birch using Tim Holtz Tags and Bookplate die. If you do not have this diecut you can also cut a tag by hand.
Die cut the Prize Stag from the adhesive backed piece of Real Wood and then remove the backing. Position the "string art" piece directly behind the stag as shown when using the template above. Sandwich or back this with the plain piece of Real Wood. Press firmly and evenly over the entire tag to adhere it.
To complete the look diecut the word Joy and some little stars from Bazzill's Gold Foil. As well cut stars from vellum and Robin's Egg cardstock to sprinkle throughout the "sky." Emboss the words "to the world", staple to the lower edge of the tag and add a gemstone nose!
How fun is that?!!
To create this simple wood-burned look once again adhere Sookwang Tape to the back of a piece of Real Wood and cut a tag. Cut a second tag from Real Wood and adhere the two pieces together. Cut through both layers of wood with the Home die. I used a piece of washi tape to hold the house in place along with my metal adaptor plate and ran it through my Vagabond - it was like magic as I picked up the tag with the little house cut all the way through. If you have trouble cutting through both layers using your regular diecutting machine you may need to take a Fiskars Fingertip Knife and complete the task, but I was fortunate to have it work the first time through with the Vagabond.
Place a piece of tape over the word "home" in the sentiment and ink with Sepia Archival Ink. Remove the tape and stamp the sentiment in place as shown below. By removing the tape you will have easily masked the word home!
To add a little additional definition to the words and vary the color I used the fine-tip of a Vintage Photo Distress Marker to outline portions of the stamped words and image.
Stamp the little smoke wisp, add an eyelet (yes, I have hoarded some of the old We R large eyelets - I still love those - LOL!) and add some twine! This is a SUPER easy tag to create, so if you are limited on time and want something totally awesome create a stack of these for those last minute housewarming gifts.
Thank you for allowing me to share my creations with you! I hope that they stimulate your creativity - it was so very wonderful to create again and such a privilege to be able to share with you once again! I wish each of you a wonderful holiday season, a very Merry Christmas and Joy here in this world at this special time of year!
