NOEL by Karen Motz

Happy Thanksgiving to all the US readers!!! Today is a day to spend with family and friends enjoying a wonderful meal, but tomorrow marks the official start of the Christmas Shopping season with Black Friday. So I created a project to help you get in the Christmas spirit.

I picked up these wood letters at my local craft store and I love that they stand up on their own. I gave them a few coats of white paint and once that was dry I misted each letter with Iridescent Pearls Maya Mist for a little sparkle and shimmer. To decorate the letters I used images from Wings of Joy and Holiday Wonder, both available at Taylored Expressions. I love how these two sets can mix and match.

I started by stamping the images with Memento Tuxedo Black onto Choice Snow White then I coloured them with copics. Then I started adding the little touches to really jazz up each image. The tree was decorated with Tiny Twinkles.

I coated the lights on the bird house with two layers of clear Glaze pen and added some sparkly snow to the bird house (white Liquid Applique topped with glitter before I puffed it).

The chipboard snowflake was coloured with a blue copic then I coated it with Waterfall Stickles and topped it with a button from my Whirligig pack.

The snowman received a hint of bling with a red Tiny Twinkle on his scarf.

I also made some quick paper trees to accent my word art. They were super simple...cut two triangles of the same size for each tree (my trees are 6, 5, and 4 inches tall). On one of the triangles, cut along the center line from the bottom to the mid-point. On the other triangle cut along the center line from the top to the mid-point. Then just slip them together...voila! No adhesive required and they'll fold flat for storage.

SALE ALERT!!!

Taylored Expressions is having a big sale this weekend in honour of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year! The entire store is 15% off!!!! Just use the promotional code TEBlackFriday upon checkout to receive the discount. Also, Tiny Twinkles are buy 2 get 1 FREE, JustRite products are 50% off, and there are the sweetest new TE shirts and aprons!!!

So skip the lineups and save some time, money and gas by shopping at Taylored Expressions from the comfort of your own home this weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

Karen

Holiday Luminary by Charmaine

When I was thinking of what to create for my post today, I remembered something I wanted to do when I created this project a month ago. I wanted to create a luminary using this house image.


When I was a little girl, I remember many Christmas Eves at my grandparent's house. My grandma had this church that used to sit on the mantle. It was a wind-up musical church. There was a light inside that glowed through the faux stained glass windows. It played Christmas carols like Silent Night and Away in a Manger and I spent many Christmas Eves winding it up and listening as I watched the glow through the windows and imagined a little village with little people. . .I had quite an imagination growing up! :) Anyway, when I created my little box last month, I knew I wanted to re-vamp it and create a luminary box!



The first thing I did was cut all of the windows from the image using a craft knife.









The next thing I did was stamp the house image from Holiday Wonder on a piece of vellum.















I cut the window sections from the vellum.







Then I adhered the vellum windows behind the cut out windows.














I didn't have another of the tall gable favor boxes, so I opened up and traced the one I had onto brown cardstock. I cut off the top tabs so that the box would be flat on top. Before assembling the box I cut out the front portion that would be hidden behind the house image.












I assembled the box and inserted my battery-operated tea light.













I attached the house image to the front of the box and there you have it! A cute little luminary that hopefully will give my girls lots of the special memories that I have! Can't you just imagine little Cuppie and family inside all toasty in front of the fire opening presents? LOL The tea light flickers, so it really does look like a fire is going inside! Hope you enjoyed my project and try one yourself!

Christmas Gift Tags

I have a quick little project to share with you, using both Wings of Joy and Holiday Wonder and the Cosmo Cricket "Jolly by Golly" papers, which are available as part of the Christmas Key Ingredients kit and the Very Merry Christmas Bundle.

Now if you know me, you know I prefer quick projects. It can take me hours just to decide what I'm going to do, so once the decision has been made, I avoid adding even more hours in production. So these little gift tags are perfect and you can "code" them by image or colour to the gift recipient.

Christmas gift tags are one of my favorite projects, and I even love to do with my kids, because they are small and don't require a lot of design work, and my kids love to colour! They like to make their own tags that will go on the gifts to them...it makes keeping track much easiere LOL! Gift tags are also a fabulous way to use up those scraps, because let's face it, you are just not going to want to use this year's designer paper next year. And while I do love to design and embellish, I try to hold back with gift tags, because they are just going to get ripped off and tossed without a second look.

For this group I used an old punch by Emaginations, that I'm pretty sure is no longer available. However, there's good news! Taylored Expressions has gift tags available, only 10 for $1.00. That's a pretty easy add on when you pick up one of these fabulous stamp sets.

All of the tags use the "Jolly by Golly" designer paper, and all images were coloured with the Copic Marker Christmas Kit To embellish I simply added some detailing with Sakura Glaze and metallic gel pens. The images were cut out and popped up with pop dots. The "to - from" stamp I borrowed from a retired SU set.

The string is embroidery floss from my stash and that's all there is to them!

You know, if you haven't already signed up to receive Taylored Expressions newsletter, you can easily do so by adding your email addy to the link on the upper right. Then you'll know when all the cool new items that arrive in the store!

Thanks for letting me share these little tags! The images from Holiday Wonder and Wings of Joy work perfectly on these small tags as well as on a card or scrapbook page. They are a quick fun project and a great way to get in some quality Mom and me time!