Advent Calendar Extravaganza

Advent Calendar Extravaganza is -the- festive event of the season! This ‘hop with a twist’ was dreamed up by Taheerah Atchia and features surprise destinations each day! Joining in the fun with Taheerah are over 60 special guests - each serving up some fantastic Christmas inspiration! Just like an Advent Calendar, you’ll never know where you’re going to be visiting next until you ‘open the door’!

And that’s not all! With 25 *amazing* sponsors taking part as well, your crafty wish list is bound to get a boost with a chance to win a prize EVERY SINGLE DAY!!

Join in the fun every day at taheerah-atchia.com to see what special surprises wait behind the door!

For day 18 of this advent hop, I created a set of tags:



Using my brand new MISTI tool made it so easy to stamp all 6 tags quickly, and have them look exactly the same. That was the quick part. It took a little longer to color everything in, but that's what I love. I love using stamps and inks and coloring, and sometimes that is so much more relaxing to me than lugging out the die-cutter (oh, it stays out at your house? pffft. I have to put everything away before every mealtime. ha.)



I used Lawn Fawn's Toboggan Together. I really love that reindeer image!

I hope you like my simple (but time-consuming, haha) tags! Since this is Taheerah's party, she's arranged for prizes every day! Today's sponsor is Lawn Fawn - woot!  Leave a comment on this blog post to be entered, and then pop back over to Taheerah's blog and leave a comment on her blog post today to double your chances. You have until December 31st, 7AM EST to leave your comments.

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ridiculously simple packaging.

I have taken to packaging the card kits for my Friday classes a little differently every week.  I always want them to look nice and festive - it's the first thing my students see when they sit down to craft - but I don't want to spend hours creating something that will be ripped into within 30 seconds.

This packaging is ridiculously simple, and so classic:

A belly band of polka dot paper, some cozy red yarn for texture, and embossed chalkboard tags.

I'm thinking this style would be awesome for Christmas gifts,if I cut strips of a coordinating wrapping paper and created "belly bands" long enough to wrap around the big boxes... what do you think?



The tags came together so quickly with just a bit of white embossing for the tag outline and sentiment, and a punch of green embossing for the one of the two trees.  I smudged on a healthy amount of white ink at the end, to play up the chalkboard style.  (full disclosure: wow makes my favorite embossing powder, but I only have it in white.  I settled on zing for my green.  The coverage is just okay for me, and I obviously put the best tree at the front of the pack.  I also used zing for my gold embossing *here* and while I love the card, the uneven coverage bothers me.)

This is my offering for the current lawnscaping challenge, which begins today.  I hope you'll play along!

And no, I didn't mean to coordinate my polka dots with the ones in the inspiration photo. ha.

We're being sponsored by lawn fawn:

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Tag, you're it!

Lawn fawn inspiration week hits day 5! Today, we're showing off winter gifts and tag, you're it!

Sometimes I like to mass-produce, and sometimes I like to take my time.  You guess which scenario these tags fall into:

I couldn't help but pull images from a few other sets to create my tags: winter bunny, yeti set go, trim the tree, and into the woods.

The yeti, double-fisting his gifts, cracks me up.  To match his double-up on gifts, I put a second tag on this gift, cut out of patterned paper.  Double your pleasure, double your fun.

Add a red gem and the deer turns into a reindeer just like that.  I dangled the end of the twine and added a festive pom to the end.

The sledding bunny is playing peekaboo.  I took the pieces that I had chopped (to make him fit within the frame of the tag) and adhered them underneath.  I did take an extra white tag to the very bottom to hide those unslightly edges. don't you worry.

I hope you like what I've created!  Visit the lawn fawn blog for even more tag-gy inspiration!