Keeping Christmas Tags

It's the 25th of the month and time again to join some of my crafty friends for our monthly Keeping Christmas Inspiration Hop! The idea of the hop is to both to bring you a little dose of holiday inspiration throughout the year and also have some Christmas cards and projects in our stash all ready to go for December 2018. If you've already been hopping along, you should have arrived from Claire's blog. If you're just popping in, read on for all the details!

Updated photo. Capturing the foil shimmer without losing the white balance is tricky. :)

I can't believe we're already half way through the year! I've been a little heads down this month preparing to close Verve for good on June 30th. So when the reminder popped up for this hop, I was taken by surprise once again!  LOL  How can I forget every single month? Maybe I'll be a little less forgetful in my "retirement"! Haha!

Anyway, for my June installment, I decided to do some pretty tags to add to handmade gifts. The pretty plaid paper is from the Prima Sweet Peppermint collection. I recently added some printable PDFs with purchase of our remaining die sets that no longer have coordinating stamps, so was pretty excited to pull our my Minc machine to do some foiling on these snowflakes that come with the Snowflake Tidings Die Set. Foiling is the equivalent magic of embossing to me, so I just *might* have gotten distracted and foiled and die cut an entire sheet of snowflakes! So. Much. Fun.

Keeping up with my quest to start using the mountain of blank tags I keep accumulating, I pulled out a couple of tags, cut the plaid paper to 2.5" x 3.25", then inked the edges of everything with antique linen distress ink and glued them together. Next I inked up my foiled and die cut snowflakes and added some flowers from my stash to the centers.  I cut a border of white using the Lacey Trim Duo die set, sponged with antique linen and cut to the size of the tags for the bottom border.  I wrapped some pink & white divine twine around the top four or five times and then tied in a bow.

The sentiments are printed from the Winter Peace DIGITAL Set and die cut with stiched dies, before adding to the tags. I topped them with long twine strings so I can tie them onto gifts come Christmas time.

Okay, now it's time to hop along and check out all the other fabulous posts on the hop. I'm so excited to hop along and see everyone's creations! The hop is hosted on the fabulous Kelly Lunceford's blog, so head over there to start from the beginning. Or continue on to visit Lori Tecler if you've already been hopping along!

Kelly Lunceford

Lesley Croghan (taking a break)

Anita Madden (taking a break)

Broni Holcombe 

Claire Broadwater

Julee Tilman {You are here}

Kim Heggins (taking a break)

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth

Rachel Bergfeld

Vicki Finger 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Enabler's List
Stamps: Winter Peace DIGITAL Set, Snowflake Tidings Printable (Verve Stamps)
Paper: Sweet Peppermint (Prima), white, blank tag
Ink: laser printer, antique linene (Ranger Distress)
Accessories: Snowflake Tidings die set, Lacey Trim Duo die set (A Cut Above by VERVE), stitched dies (Cottage Cutz), flowers (Wild Orchid designs), pink baker's twine (Divine Twine), pink Minc foil and Mini Minc machine (Heidi Swapp)

Foiled Autumn Coffee

Hi friends! I got a chance to do something new to me this weekend. Two years ago I purchased a Minc machine from Amazon and plugged it in and it started smoking and burning up.  It would never get to the ready state, just smoked and smoked. So frightening! So I immediately packed it back up and returned it.  Later that season, one of the local craft stores was having a big sale and I picked up another machine for a steal, thinking at least if I bought it locally, the return process would be a little less painful than taking the package to UPS.  But the holiday season and sicknesses hit and the minc got tucked away in the closet and forgotten. Fast forward to this weekend when I decided for better or for worse, I'd give the thing a test drive.  I really love the look of foil, so was excited to pair it with our Coffee Please digi.

I used one of the sentiments from the printable PDF that was already printed on some pearlized cream cardstock. I ran it through with some orange foil and it worked like a charm! No smoking and success right off the bat! Now I must foil all the things!  :)  I had a hard time catching the foil in my photography, only the close-up above captures a bit of the real shimmery orange-y goodness of it.  Those letters on the left side and the tip of the leaf are orange too, I just couldn't find the right angle to show the glimmer of the whole piece.

The background started with a piece of cream cardstock.  I embossed it with a new embossing folder I picked up at Tuesday Morning. Don't you love those dimpled leaves?  I coated the whole piece with clear gesso, then added some prima and dylusions sprays to get the coloring I wanted.  Next I painted on some gold paint and some copper wax to highlight things.  The leaf on the sentiment is watercolored with the same colors of sprays, then I added a couple fabric leaves that I did the same treatment with.

Finishing embellishments were some brown striped ribbon, a metal leaf embellishment and a chipboard coffee cup sticker from the Amber Moon collection.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. I hope you have an inspired day.

Enabler's List
Stamps: Coffee Please DIGITAL (Verve Stamps)
Paper: pearlized cream (Paper Accents), cream (Neenah)
Ink: laser printer, vanilla caramel spray (Dylusions), Pot Marigold Color Bloom spray (Prima), antique gold paint (Prima), rich copper metalliqu wax (Prima)
Accessories: orang Minc foil (Heidi Swapp), Amber Moon chipboard stickers (Prima), Downton Abbey leaf flourish embossing folder (Crafter's Companion), metal leaf embellishment (The Funkie Junkie Boutique), fabric leaves (Recollection), ribbon (SU!), paper distresser, Minc machine (Heidi Swapp), Clear gesso (Prima)