Our theme for tonight’s Cracker Jack Stampers meeting was glitter. I never really used glitter much until I took a class from Barbara Trombley of Art Glitter and discovered how I could incorporate glitter into my style of distress and vintage.

So, if you’re like a lot of my artsy friends, we’ve been following Tim’s 12 Tags of Christmas and today’s tag was so over the top with STUFF that I decided to take his lead and really incorporate tons of technique and embellishments. It was a lot of fun to create and I tried techniques I’ve been wanting experiment with for a long time.

I started with a plain manila tag and did a milk resist. It’s a technique by Lisa Bebi that was featured in Somerset Studio Nov/Dec 2006. It always sounded interesting to me so I saved that magazine all these years. After the milk resist the tag was colored with Victorian Velvet and Bundled Sage Distress Ink, spritzed with home made Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls shimmer mist, then treated with spritz-n-flick several times and set with a heat tool. A background image was stamped with the music stamp from Tim Holtz’ Christmas Minis 2 in Pumice Distress Ink.

I adhered a scallop edge from a paper doily inked with Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Black Soot Distress Inks then spritzed with Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls mist and heat set. The medallion is cut from vintage sheet music held together with Tim Holtz Tissue Tape using the large medallion die from Tim Holtz. The medallion and the ‘wish’ ticket are both inked with Victorian Velvet and Bundled Sage Distress Inks and spritzed with the Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls mist and heat set.

I painted the tips of the medallion with Art Institute Dries Clear glue and dipped them in a gold glitter. I used the fine tip attachment on the Dries Clear to edge the ‘wish’ ticket and sprinkled on the glitter. The tag edges were distressed with the Tim Holtz Tonic Distresser then inked with the same colors and edged with the Gold Adirondack Paint Dabber (a Wendy Vecchi trick). Rubbed the gold paint into the ‘believe’ metal tag and wiped off, added Stickles Icicle Glitter Glue to the fence pieces that were aged with a rusting technique from Michael Jack Putman.

I loved making this tag – it was a great opportunity to use a variety of techniques I’ve been saving up for when I had time to play.

Note: Sue Kalis – your number was randomly kicked out for the prize! Please send me your mailing information (lneffscraps@gmail.com) so I can send you your stamp set! Congratulations and Merry Christmas!