Another week, another tag. We are on Day #9, 2007 from Tim Holtz's blog. I hope you will play along. I had fun making this one and got to use some more of that great plaid ribbon I picked up. This was really an easy, quick one to make, so come on and join in with us and add your link below.

Whew, I am really cutting it close this week! I had to go for a two-fer AGAIN! For Linda's CCC #33, found on page #56 of Tim's book and SSSS challenge themed "Show us some stripes", here is what I came up with. I keep looking at all of the magnificent pieces using metal that all of my dear blog friends have been making and ran out and purchased lots of stuff to try it, yet I still had not given it a go. So for this one, I used a metal sheet and cie-cut the tattered florals and a leaf one called Doo-dads by Magnolia. I fooled around with various wheels and tips to create this version. I was inspired by Lin on her blog (http://yoursartfully.blogspot.com/) by all of her gorgeous metals and several great flowers made by her. For the coloring, I used meadow and citrus for the leaves and purple twilight and sailboat blue for the flowers. I will definately be trying some more metal stuff. What fun! Thought mine turned out pretty good for never trying it before. Gotta get me some of those Big Daddy molds from TenSecondsStudios now. LOL For the Stripes portion, I used some patterned paper that I got eons ago and was so bright. One of those, "what was I thinking packs" so I painted over it with gesso and let it dry. Blended some distress inks around the edges and stamped the verse. Of course I smeared it so had to fix it by making more gessoed paper and die-cutting it with Tim's labels and stamping on this and layering it on top of the smeared mess with pop-dots. No mistakes, just creative opportunities! Embrace imperfection, that's what Tim told me!

As we move into Saturday morning, it's time to post my tag for Day #8, 2007 in our challenge to make all of Tim's December Tags from Start to Finish for 2011. Don't know what I'm talking about? We decided to make just one tag a week for 48 weeks and that would make us the complete set of Tim's tags since he started them on his blog. All you need to do is go to his blog and on the left side scroll down until you see the 12 Days of Christmas tags. Click on 2007 and get started. We have made 1-7 so far and start posting on Saturdays but you can join in anytime. I have a link thingy at the bottom of my post for you to add your link so we can all see them. It's been a lot of fun and we will have all these gtreat tags when we are done. I am going to make mine into banners to decorate for the holidays, so I am doing them Christmas style, but play along and make them Christmassy or not. Your choice. You can still jump in and be caught up in no time. This ine was making a weathered looking door. I decided to have a red door instead of blue as my front door is red. I had these cute mittens to use to hang from my garland with thin twine. Found this wide plaid ribbon on sale a while ago and cut it down the center and it's perfect for tags and Christmas so you'll be seeing it a lot.

I am on a roll today! I have been sick for a week and haven't been having any time off work to speak of lately, so no playtime. So today when I was only scheduled for two hours, I hit my studio and took advantage of the day. I got a lot of projects done and worked on a couple others and put a few things away. I opened up my new Tonic guillatine cutter and tried it out. SWEEEEET! Put away a couple of orders that came in from JoAnn's and Custom Crops, etc. I started and finished my Challenge piece for the Everything Wendy Vecchi group. We get two weeks to make this one and I am done on the second day. Yeah baby! The challenge was to make a wall hanging of some sort using Wendy's stamps, a heart, and a piece of jewelry. I used a beer coaster and gessoed it and then painted over it with Shabby Shutters dabber, overstamped with one of Wendy's backgrounds in Coffee Archival ink. I then die-cut a primitive heart and a small tag out of grunge-paper and inked with Fired Brick distress ink and a blending tool. Stamped it with the coffee ink again and another background stamp. I stamped a verse onto the tag and trimmed it down to fit better and rounded the corners by holding it against the part I cut off. I added a ribbon to the tag and some gorgeous velvet ribbon and hot-glued down one of my favorite earrings tha broke. Damn it! I loved those. This is why my piece is green instead of the blue I wanted to use. LOL I used a memo pin to hold the tag and then added a butterfly to the heart. Got all the way done and realized .... no flower! Forgive me Wendy, but there's no room left. Punched a coule holes with my Cropodile and tied the ribbon for hanging. I have two pics so you can see the phrase on the tag, but that also cuts off the butterfly, hence two pics. LOL

Made a couple of Valentine's cards today. I know, I know, but I have been too sick and so finally was able to play a bit and have to send one to a gal for a good cause. She is donating a certain amount for every one she receives and my girlfriend asked me to make one and send it so I figured I might as well make one for hubby for next year. I should have posted the 6 gorgeous assorted color roses that he gave me. Anyway one of them has a shaving cream background and the other has Spanish Gold and they both are done with Neutral Shadows from the newest Technique Junkie newsletter. If you aren't a subscriber, you really should be. Great stuff goes on over there! For some reason, the light vintage lace with pearls doesn't show but really pretty in real life.

This week's challenge for the SSSS (Simon Says Stamp and Show) was show me a tag. Well, anyone who knows me or my style, knows that I love monochromatic art so I went with blues for my tag. I used a new stamp I have been covetting by Hero Arts on patterned paper. Gathered some ribbon above and below it and then used Tim's on the edge scallops and made a couple narrow borders to tuck around them. Twisted up some ribbon to form a flower and added a button for it's center and used just the edge row of stitches from one of Wendy vecchi's stamps for the stitches at top and bottom. Distress inks and archival black.

For the CCC #32 this week from Studio L3 blog, we turned to page #59. This was a fun one and I used a stamp that I haven't used before and made a mask of it by stamping it onto the mask sheet with stazon and then trimmimg it out slightly smaller than it is. Worked pretty well, but didn't want to stick to my background really well as I had a lot of perfect pearls mist on it. I used both black archival ink as well as sepia for my overstamping and then a little maroon at the end. I really like the end results of this one!

We are on the second challenge in the Everything Wendy Vecchi yahoo group now. This time we were to make a card using her pigment ink resist technique and a chipboard flower. I did the technique onto chipboard several times and tried various colors over it before I got decent results. I ended up having to use snowcap paint dabber for my white ink as I didn't get my new ink pad yet and don't have the refill for it. I liked the Victorian Velvet results best but used a piece of the broken china as well and die-cut my flowers. I did another resist with Wendy's background script stamp and then stamped part of one of her flowers so I could add my flowers to the stem. Stamped the verse in Black Archival and the scallop on the bottom. Added a shimmery ribbon and a sparkly swirl to the flower centers. You can see the resist on the pink flower pretty well, but really have to look in the blue. It worked pretty well on the chipped sapphire one I did on the back, but they didn't look nice together.

Yesterday was my youngest sisterSue's birthday, and my sister Patty's birthday is on Valentine's Day. Normally both of their cards are kind of Valentiney so went a different route this year. Hope they like them. I used a gold metallic cardstock to die-cut the cages and then smeared it direct to paper with Ranger's embossing Ink. I then used a pinch here and a pinch there of Distress embossing powders in tea dye and walnut stain to make it look rusty.

I can't believe another week has flown by, but it has. It's Saturday once again, so we are moving on to Day #7 in Tim Holtz's Christmas Tags, 2007. If you want to join us, go to Tim's blog and click on the Twelve Days of Christmas Tags, 2007. We are doing one tag each week, starting at the beginning and working our way through them all.Would love to have more players join us! I enjoyed this one especially since I just used this technique last week for the Rusty Enamel challenge on StudioL3's blog. Can't wait to see what you all make!

List-mom Lori, from the EverythingWendyVecchi yahoo group has started to challenge us using projects based on Wendy's Making Art books. You don't have to have the book to play, but you do have to join the group. This week it is an atc, Wendy-style; requirements, use a butterfly, a scallop, and at least one Wendy stamp. I used a wrinkle-free distress background piece I had on my desk and one of her background stamps. I then stamped the flower with Olive Archival ink and used my glue pen to trace it and applied fine green flower-soft to the stems, and then yellow to the flowers. I die-cut my scallops using Tim's on the edge scallops die. I stamped Wendy's butterfly onto another piece of the same background sheet and cut out and pop-dotted it above flowers. I punched out the word window strip and stamped verse and then covered it with Rock candy distress crackle paint. I rubbed rock candy stickles on the entire butterfly with my finger. Looks pretty Wendy-ish to me. Join our group and play along!

It's once again time to double-up on my challenges this week. CCC #31 is found on page #41, Rusted enamel and SSSS challenge for the week is Show Me Some Emblossing, so my project works for both. I can't tell you how it's done, but I used Stormy Sky, Shabby Shutters, and Brushed Corduroy distress inks and clear detail embossing powder. Stamping was done with black archival after the Stazon looked like crap and I had to start over! LOL I hope Linda doesn't mind, but I loved her elephant so much, I had to dig mine out and use him for the first time here and create a scene with him. I loved this technique and am having so much fun and learning so much from these challenges so again want to thank Linda as well as Simon says stamps for that!

Around rolled Saturday again and we are on to Day #6, 2007 in the December tags from Start to Finish challenge. You can find it in the archives of Tim Holtz's blog under the 12 days of Christmas, 2007. We are doing one tag a week until we complete them all. Join in if you can, the more , the merrier. I add a spot to link your art so we can all share. I used a snowman and snowflake mask from the holiday mask sheet. I used reds with gold perfect pearls for my spray, but wanted a little more, so blasted it with my new Perfect Pearls mist afterwards in Gold for the flecks you see. I used peeled paint and gold for my grungeboard flourishes I cut with tim's die. Simple, fun, and easy on this one! Play along!

Time for another double challenge this week. I combined the CCC #30, found on page 48 and the SSSS challenge for this week, themed Love and made this page for my technique book. I did wrinkle-free distress for the background using Victorian Velvet, Fired Brick, and Aged Mahogony along with Heritage Gold Perfcet Pearls Mist. Love this! So shimmery and pretty in real life. Blended in a bit of Brushed Corduroy in bare areas and along ades for depth and overstamped with my new Hero Arts music background stamp in Archival Sepia. Yummy!I used the wordstick, Love and the round ones say, lifetime and Forevermore for the technique. You'll have to read the book for that, but I used Cranberry on mine. Also on the frame and pin.. The image was in my stash and I glued it in from the back with glossy accents. added long fasteners and jump rings to attach together and my dymo label maker in cursive on pink labels to write"They found the love of a lifetime", added some fancy velvet trim and pinned the word right to that. I think this is my favorite page so far!