Winter in Blue Tags

 Blue is one of my favorite colors.  When I was a little girl I loved blue dresses and coats.  My room was blue and white, oh the pain on moms face when I just had to have the white ruffled bedspread lol.  My first record player was blue and my first telephone was blue.  Fast forward to my first apartment and everything was blue and white with ruffles and lace and flowers.. Then I got married to a guy who liked BROWN!  Yikes!  None of my stuff went with his manly stuff.  I slowly weaseled my blues in.  So lets fast forward to now.  Now there's nearly not a speck of blue in my house.  Not because I've out grown it but because I have found so many other colors really do exist lol.  But Blue is still my favorite and so making Blue tags should be a breeze.  Should be.  Seriously............IT SHOULD BE.  So why is this sooooo hard????

Earlier this summer I gave 2 of my nieces a package of homemade tags.    I had just realized that my nephew, who just married this June, might be offended if I did not include his wife in the tag giving so I sped off to get some done for her.  But hold my horses.   She's a very religious girl of the Jewish faith.  She doesn't celebrate the Christmas holidays the way we do.  So much for the reds and greens.  But wait.....I was going to be doing a blue tag project up at the cabin and Claire punched stuff out and I have extras right here at home so since I have some time before I go up to the cabin I decided to get some "WINTER TAGS" made for her .  Easy Peasy right?

HA!  All I made were 7 but trying to come up with 7 embellishments that are non Christmasy is hard.  Especially when you want to stay in the blue color.  Just incase she wants to use them for Chanukah.  Because I had found that alot of stuff I had preped, although all in blues, had Santa's mangers, angel's etc.  All things that are not part of Chanukah.  UGHHHH.  Well here's what I came up with.

Now I know the gold looks a bit out of place but it is what it is.  This is not an easy task.  I think I really should have made an even 10 instead of seven so I'm going to try and work on that.  But for now this is what I have.  I'm starting to second guess my cabin project.  I have 25 tags cut out for that and you know how I am not a fan of duplicates.  Its going to be difficult to come up with enough different looking embellies to do those tags.  I want to say these were fun but in all honesty it gave me a headache.  Trying to make them look festive for the holidays but not represent our Christmas traditions.  You never really think of those things until it is really brought to your attention.  You even have to omit things like Christmas Socks, trees, jingle bells, sleighs.  Wouldn't you know it as I am typing I am now thinking of some things I could have used.  Dang......I may have to add some more tags.  New ideas are popping into my head right this minute! LOL

Stay tune there might be a part 2

Til next time........................................

Crafting at the Cabin Tag DUMP

 JINGLE JINGLE JINGLE!!!!!!  Yep.....I've spent an entire 8 days playing with paper!  The weather here at the lake has been beautiful and my neighbors' grandkids were up for a week.  So while I made my tags on the porch looking out at the lake I was able to watch all the antics of a bunch of young teenage boys.  OMG the craziness!  But those kids had a blast had they were fun to watch.  In the meantime, I was able to get alot of tags made for Christmas.  To keep myself from getting bored with one design I would limit myself to 8 of 1 design.  Some I only got 6 of others only 4, depending on the scraps I used.  It was definitely a process.  I thought I could whip out a ton in one day.  After all they are just little tags but when you have to cut every single piece, make every single embellie, wait for all the glue to dry, and keep clearing up your mess 3x's a day for meals (because the only place available to craft is the eating table) you sure don't get many done in a day.

So today is PHOTO DUMP DAY.  We all know how to make tags so I don;t need to walk you through how I made these.  I just need to show them off so here goes.  A weeks worth of tags.

So 46 tags in 8 days.  Ok I know I can do better.  Especially if I don't use alot of embellies or if I only use embellies that are pre-made.  Pre-made by me of course.  I think that's going to be my next goal.  Make a bunch of embellies ahead of time.  I have a couple weeks of being back home where I can get everything cut, meaning tag bases and layers, then have all embellies pre-made.  Get a container full of homemade grommets and gather all my bling.  Then when I return to the cabin I'll see how many I can whip together in a day when all I have to do is design them with what I already have cut.  Hmmmmmm...better call my little Claire Bear to come help me punch some more paper so I can get to work.

Til next time

PUNCHED SCRAP EMBELLIES

 So after all that hard work Claire did punching paper for me here at the cabin it is now time to make some use of these precious gems.  One of my favorite people to follow on YouTube is Septeria18.  She has so many great tutorials that are very easy to follow.  She has great ideas for embellies as well as some awesome Happy Mail projects that are flat for easy mailing.  So when Claire punched out all these pieces of various shapes I decided I was going to take Septeria18's approach and just layer things together and see what happens.  All the papers Claire used were either Christmas prints or Christmas colors so all the embellies will be Christmas inspired to be put on simple tags for this years gifts.   I need alot and I have alot of pieces so I better get crafting.  Let me remind you of the pieces she punched.

And here are a few of the embellies I have completed so far.

Now I'm not sure as to when I'm going to use these embellies.  I'm pretty sure they will just be put aside as I had some other ideas for some Christmas tags I had made.  Thats in the next post.  I will say I find it very relaxing to just sit looking up out at the lake every now and then and just fiddle with embellies.  I think it's going to be one of my new past times along with the tags.   I'll be doing an embellie "DUMP" later this summer.  Wonder how many different ones I'll come up with?  One thing for sure nearly all will be Christmas inspired.  I may have to find some friends to hand some out to.  I have a feeling I'm going to have way too many LOL.

Til next time........................................................................................................