Have you seen the great giveaway on Hels' blog? Here's the details:
The candy on offer is: One set of Dotty Dot Stitchels plus Kling On to mount onto, a set of !brand new! Wendy Vecchi stamps, "Art of Making Merry", a Maya Road Chipboard Scalloped Square book, a Maya Road Chipboard Scalloped Circle book, a Maya Road Chipboard Bracket Taglet book, a Maya Road Chipboard Cat Keychain, a Maya Road Chipboard Fruit Keychain, a Maya Road Emoticon Spinner and... finally....a Junkitz Tim Holtz Ruler Book So, remember, all you need to do to be in with a chance to win is; link this piccie to your blog then back to mine, become a follower if you aren't already...and leave me a comment so I know you have done this...to be in with a double chance of winning, also make a piece of art incorporating the theme Believe and remember to tell me where you are showing it so I can visit you :O))Go check her out here
http://pinkleart.blogspot.com/.

Here is a shot of the thirteen tags from this year's Twelve Days of Christmas with the amazing Ti9m Holtz. I really had a great time making all of these and substituting for what I had on hand to recreate his techniques on each of them. He is such a wonderful teacher and so inspiring!

Have you been to Jennie's blog to see her generous offer of blog candy to twelve lucky winners? Even if you only made one of the tags you have a chance to win! What are you waiting for, go and check her out!
http://theartisticstamper.blogspot.com/

And here is the final tag of this year's 12 Days of Christmas starring Tim Holtz teaching thousands his secrets in the privacy of their homes. This one is my favorite as I have been dying to try these grungepaper roses. They are soooo cool and not really hard to make at all. The big ones are really easy but I struggled a bit with the little ones. I wanted to keep mine non-Christmassy so I used these leaves from Sizzix die cut and inked them a bit with distress inks and left the word ticket off also and added my feminine pearly lace to finish it off. I f you weren't following Tim's blog and playing along, I suggest that you go there and cheeck it out. Print off the directions and do them as you get a chance to and be sure to use wahat you have to make it yours! Once things settle down around here, I hope to back and do last year's and the year before that's. they are awesome and you learn some great techniques step-by-step from the Timster himself. It doesn't get any better than that unless you can be there live in his classes!

This one was a lot of fun, too and I love the background. I didn't have the Itop brad maker but I do have it ordered to arrive very soon! LOL It is a cool new toy so stay tuned for future projects. I think I made good use out of the buttons in my stash to substitute though. I couldn't decide between the gingerbread people and the hat and mittens, so I made up both of them. Again chipboard as I have no plain grungeboard and yes, I have it ordered!

I failed miserably at this technique as I had nothing to make it with the right way. Tim's was really cool-looking like old vintage stained glass. You'll have to see his to get what it was supposed to be like but I forced myself to finish it anyway!

Here's my tag for Day #9. I absoluely love this filmstrip ribbon and am scouring collage sheets for images that will fit these. I am placing a big order today for more sheets. Loved the painting the metal flowers to make it a pointsettia also. Very clever! Couldn't find my bullclips so mine is not attached with the distressed brad but of course two tags later, I found two packs of them!

I really loved making this one and transforming vellum into faux parchment and curling it. I used a music background I had because I didn't think I had Tim's but low and behold I do! LOL Again chipboard instead of grungeboard on the lamp-post and holly leaves. I don't have his holly leaves stamp either but had this ancient one from The Angel Company in my stamp collection. I will be making these again but changing it up.

My take on Day #7. I didn't have the right Santa stamp so I used just a portion of this one which is actually inside a snowglobe. I didn't have the right sentiment either so had to angle mine and it didn't quite fit but it's OK. I struggled with the resist on this one. I think the key is more paint and more ink. I blotted and not rubbed to remove from the resisit areas but it's not really white like Tim's was, more of a pinkish white but still looks very cool.

This one was really fun! I had to use chipboard instead of grungeboard for my tree and car but it worked fine. Harder to cut in such retail, but I was careful not to rip it. I didn't have the Fluffy Stuff wither so used a bag of these sparkly pieces that I don't ervrn know what they are called that I was gifted by a dear Technique Junkie a while back for another technique. They worked great! I didn't have the same sentiment either so used this one and it fits the scene. Love this velvet Merry Christmas ribbon I found while scrounging in my stash. Don't remember even buying it but glad I did!

Here's Day#5 tag minus Tim's pine bough stamp. I used a branch and then after embossing it, a pinecone both by Stampin'Up for mine. I didn't have any white Christmas rub-ons, so I embossed in white a greeting stamp. The background on this one is just breath-taking. I hated to cover it up!

Sorry it has taken me so long to post but I wanted to have these in order and I got behind and had to skip atound a bit. Here's my tag for Day #4. It has the cutest little removable wearable art pin. This was soooo easy to make, I have to place another order and get some more memory capsules and more frames and glass this size.

I didn't have the same stamps but think this turned out cute with several Studio G sets used here.

Well, I finally had time today to start to follow along on Tim's 12 Days of Christmas Tags for 2009. I had to really push but I got Days 1,2, and 3 done. No time for 4, but high hopes for over the week-end! I had to do some improvising but they turned out pretty good. I really love the plaid with the alcohol inks and using the Picket Fence stickles to make icicles. The home-made wired ribbon scarf was way cool, too. Tim is the man!

We had a challenge in my yahoo group Everything Wendy Vecchi to use her stamps that were not intended for Christmas to make holiday projects and called it the UnChristmas challenge. It was a fun challenge. I used the butterfly from Nature's Art set and cut them out, each a litle smaller as I went and stacked them leaving the antennae on only the first one to use as the tree stand. I used another of her background stamps behind it and distress inks to color everything and then stickles to accent the MS snowflake punches and the snowflake button from my stash. I think it turned out cute. I just love Wendy's style!

Well, Lisa is doing in again this year. Yeah! She is offering her free holiday downloads on the Countdown to Christmas. She's got some great stuff there so go and check it out! http://countdown.tentwostudios.com:80/

Well, I found the time to make my six inchies for the Alphabet letter K swap this month but not the themed set. I chose K is for King and here are the results. Hope the gals like them.

I made these for a swap I joined for a set of three atcs and the theme was People. I had fun making these as I have not had much time to art it up lately at all. Just gives me the thirst for it again!

Here is the card I made for Diana's birthday and then demoes how to make it and we all made a Christmas one so they would have a pattern and the measurements to make more of them at home. It is putzy cutting all those pieces, but well worth it in the end. Good way to use up scraps of patterned paper as well. The birthday one I stamped onto patterned paper and the Christmas one did not have anything added to it as the paper itself was pretty busy.

I'm not sure what I have done but somehow I have wiped out all my old posts so I better get more going soon! On Veteran's Day, two of my girlfriends came over and we made cards for the troops. You can send 15 cards in each packet to the Red Cross and they send them to whoever needs them. What better day to make them on! We were each to come up with a card design and the supplies to make 15 so that we could assembly-line out 45 of them and then I wanted to teach them a card I learned so we had a fun day. I made lunch for us and we created, Of course, I did NOT have my idea done, but of course Diana had two sets ready to go and several other ideas. Nancy mailed them off to the Red Cross as she was the one who had the info and the idea to do this. It was a very fun and productive day!

I am sorry for neglecting my blog for so long but real life has gotten in the way lately and I have not had any me-time to play in my studio. Here are some atcs I made for our birthday club in one of my atc groups. Lyn said she enjoys script, florals, and the color blue and Liz said she enjoys men, black & white, and flourishes and swirls. I was able to make one of them for both gals as it has script in the background and I kept it black and white. Clever, huh!

I finally got to try a new technique from the TJ's newsletter that I have seen so many cool examples of, Alcohol Ink Foil. i made some atcs for two of my groups with them. One with the recipient's name included and the other for my Divas group called Changing Seasons. Very hard to photograph so a bit blurry but they are gorgeous in person!

I have been too busy to blog lately! Here are my inchies for my group that swaps month. This month I did Letter "J" is for Jigsaw and Ghosts/Ghouls. I used shrink plastic for the ghosts and colored the backs of them with colored pencil before shrinking. I cut these out with a Sizzix die.

We celebrated little Phillip's first birthday last week-end with a huge party at a park near their home. It was cold, windy, and rainy but a good time was had by all. Phillip slept through the opening of the presents but woke up to have his own personal cake. We took a lot of pictures and this is a four generation shot of my Mom, Kayla, Phillip, and myself. He was a really good boy through all of the noise and excitement especially for a little guy with croup. He was so sick all week and still was not himself but did so good all day!

So I finally got to see someone do Encaustic Wax in person and be taught how to do it!!! I have wanted to try this for sooooo long now! It is so fun and easy and very addicting. So pretty you hate to cover it up at all. I found that if I stamped my images first, they look better than trying to stamp over the wax. I used black Stazon on the glossy and then did the waxing with my craft iron, cut to size and added the leaf brad.

Here's an atc I did recently for our Ships Ahoy theme. I used a Simple Green Spritz background and then overstamped the ship, some waves, and the sun, then cut the shank off an anchor button and gluedotted that on.

We had a swap in my UK group to use "the Wandering Stamp" to make an atc for your partner and then send it along with the stamp to the next person on the list. So we all had to use the stamp somewhere on our atc creation. I decided to add the fun little witch on mine for a different twist. Background is just acryllic paints dry-brushed on in cross-hatch fashion.