T!m's 12 Tags of Christmas - Day 1

December 1st finally arrived. I was so excited to see T!m's tag that i woke up in the middle of the night just to check it out and then had a hard time going back to sleep with visions of fences & houses dancing in my head!

For however many i'm able to follow along with, this year, I'm really going to try to force myself to think more artistically, and less literal (which is something i really struggle with), and avoid the temptation to copy exactly (although some i'm sure i will, lol). I sometimes lean more toward skittles than grunge (an ongoing battle between Jennifer McGuire & T!m), but I love the grunge look too, so I’m really not sure what my style is (still finding it I guess)

This one is created on a wood oval i found at Dollar Tree...the inking technique T!m outlines here worked perfectly on this surface after a base coat of paint. The rest of the elements (house, bird, fence, tree) are all cut on my Silhouette and in most cases were drawn right in the Silhouette software (the tree is the exception...it was a purchased shape). The limitation of the Silhouette is that I can’t cut grunge paper, so I turned to the next sturdiest paper I know….CLUB SCRAP! I’ve used the white paper from a very old kit called Key to my Heart and colored it with distress inks. For the house, I used a Fiskars texture plate (basketweave) to add embossing to my house. I cut that into strips and used dimensional foam pieces to create depth on my “siding”. I then sanded to reveal some of the white again. The bird is more white inked with barn door distress ink and accented with black enamel accents. The tree is inked with Walnut stain and accented with ultra fine glitter (for snow). Ultra fine glitter is also used on the fascia board pieces on the house. Tim’s crackle paint is applied to the Club Scrap paper fence, but I didn’t get much crackling. The 25 comes from T!m’s Seasonal Salvage stickers.