Same Same, but Different

Bethany had two piano teachers this year. Wonderful, beautiful, lovely, identical twin piano teachers.

She still can't tell them apart. 

Either can we. 

So she was in such a dilemma when it came time to giving them a Thank You / Merry Christmas gift each at her last lesson this week. When she sat down to address the tags we made to adorn each gift she realised that she wouldn't know which gift to give to which teacher!! We settled on the idea that she would just write a very generic (but meaningful) message without mentioning any names! Cheeky!

We had already purposefully made some tags earlier in the month. Tags that were very similar, but also very different. I thought that would be about right?

The tags were created by combining some letterpress labels, with the Printable Journal cards released last month with the Walden kits at Studio Calico.

I stacked those two elements up on top of a watercoloured tag and added a few extra pieces like the enamel dots on the reindeer horns (which has become a bit of a standard decoration for this little fella!)

And finished them off with a bit of my stamped Christmas ribbon.

I'll also be entering these tags into the 12 Days of Christmas challenges hosted by Papercut Labs. It obviously fits the criteria for Challenge #12 'Make it Chrismtassy'! Have you checked out the challenges there? They're quite straightforward, and you could easily combine lots of them into one project. For example, I could possibly pass this off for Challenge #4 'Stitch Something' because I ran them through my sewing machine as I usually do.

There's some pretty amazing prizes up for grabs, sponsored by all these generous companies. It's worth having a look at, trust me! You'll be hearing more from me about this in a couple of days as well...... but don't wait for that ;-)



Supplies:

Walden Printable Christmas Cards Letterpress Bundle Letterpress Plate: Magical Sentiments Studio Calico Craft Die: Labels Letterpress Plate: Labels Letterpress Ink: Red Letterpress Ink: Gold Color Theory Enamel Dots: Aqua Color Theory Enamel Dots: Yellow Christmas Ribbon Stamping

InLinkz.com

Letterpress Ornament Tags

I think I mentioned that I recently succumbed to the letterpress craze (better late than never I guess) and so now I'm in experimentation mode. Most of the plates I've bought so far are Christmassy, and since I'm in that frame of mind anyway it only makes sense to churn out some gift tags.

I took my Merry Ornament letterpress plate from Studio Calico (where else!?) and got to with testing it out on different papers. Even though they're all just test images I figured it's still worthwhile making them pretty, so all the paper got a little sprinkling of watercolour first.

The lime green one is made with the 'proper' thick letterpress paper whilst the other three in this photo are just plain ol' watercolour paper. Not hugely obvious which is which in the pictures hey? But the letterpress paper is actually really really thick which certainly makes for a lovely sturdy tag. The fifth tag which you can see in the first photo is ordinary printer paper and whilst it barely makes an impression it still stamps the image cleanly in this mixture of gold and silver ink I'm using, so still quite a useful little technique.

In the end I added a little finishing touch with the miniature Christmas words from the Kellie Stamps Joy set just because I find it really hard to leave things one-layered!