Twelve Tags of Christmas

Hello friends.  Playing along with the very talented Loll Thompson and her Twelve Tags of Christmas challenge today.  Loll is the Queen of Mixed Media and is always inspiring me to try other techniques, and the one that has intrigued me the most lately is Alcohol Inks and Yupo paper.  Between Loll's posts and video, and the class I took a few weeks ago, I have been having a lot of fun with this bold and MESSY art form!  So here's what I came up with for my Christmas tag:

I started with 3 different shades of blue ink and 1 of green ink and then when that was dry, I used alcohol blending solution and misted and splattered over my Yupo paper so the colors moved a bit.  Lastly I used a technique I learned in the class I took where you take half of a drinking straw and have it ready in your mouth, and then use your darkest color ink and squeeze out a drop and then blow through the straw to move the ink in what I call a Rorschach like splatter.  If you click to enlarge the photo, you can see this better.  You can see it under the "o" in the Joy, a little bit to the right of the larger snowflake, and to the left of the top part of the tree.  It does take some practice as you have to do quick and hard breaths through the straw to get it to move with feathering out.  Very cool when it does work though!  I started with a PTI Basic Bookmarks #3 die for my tag, and then I used a TH Woodlands die for my Christmas tree and embossed it with copper EP.  I also embossed in copper the "joy" die cut from PTI's Wet Paint Holiday Collection, and also cut one from black to offset behind the copper one...gives a little more dimension that way.  The snowflakes are from a small set of IO dies.  I also embossed in copper the edges of my Tiny Tags (PTI) where I did my only stamping with the "for you".  My ribbon I dyed with a couple of the alcohol inks I used on the tag to match.  Here's a little closer up view:

Loll and her special guests have been showing some absolutely GORGEOUS tags the past few days, so if you're looking for some inspiration, or just want to gaze at some beautiful tags, head on over to Loll's Blog to check it out.

Thanks so much for stopping by today...I love it when you do!