Tim's Tag Challenge--Tag No. 2

Well, just like yesterday, let me show you Tim Holtz' tag that inspired my tag. Pretty, huh? And as you can see, my tag is closer to Tim's today. Not dead-on, but closer.

The OnyxXpressions snowflakes were stamped first and embossed with clear embossing powder (EP). I used a coated white paper for this tag, and that's going to be important to know in a minute. I sponged some blue distress inks on the tag, then took a heated craft iron, put some copy paper over the tag, and ironed off the embossing powder from the snowflakes. The copy paper absorbed all of the EP like magic, leaving me with white snowflakes on a blue background, but it's all very smooth. You don't need a craft iron to do this technique--the one that you iron your clothes with will work fine.

I embossed the pine cone (Stampin Up) and the pine branches (Penny Black) and the "NOEL" (Anna Griffin) . . . yadda, yadda, yadda, not very interesting, whatever.

Here's the interesting thing: On the edges where there were no pine branches, I stamped some Fancy Pants flourishes with VersaFine sepia ink. I know, you can't see any brown flourishes. That's because I wiped them off and it took the distress ink off with it! I wish my tag had been a little larger to start with, because these "ghost flourishes" are very cool, and I am going to try to incorporate them into my next tag a little bigger, because this is definitely something I want to play with. I wonder whether the heat setting of the ink (from ironing off the clear EP from the snowflakes) contributed to this technique--something to explore.

The birds are punched with that really good Martha Stewart sparrow punch and embossed with three coats of pewter EP. Finally, I finished by adding some ribbon and red "nailhead" stickers. I was going to make some baubles and attach them to the ribbon like Tim had done, but I really undersized the tag and thought they would be overwhelming. Plus I wanted something red in the lower right-hand corner to balance the red ribbon, so I went with the nailheads instead of the baubles.