12 Days of Christmas with Design Team Member Amanda Sherman

Hi again!  I’m Amanda Design Team member!!


Every year for Christmas, I like to do something that really says “I’m thinking about you.”  I’ll admit, we’re not a millionaire family and sometimes we can’t afford to buy the gifts that’d we’d like to give.  But I think that the specialness (wait, is that a word? LOL) of a gift is the thought that goes into it.

As well as having a limited budget, I know there’s more in that we’d love to spend the holidays with our parents, for the kids to spend it with their Grandparents.   However, the many miles and states between us keep that from happening.  So this year, I wanted to put a little extra thought & effort into Christmas in a way that didn’t cost a lot of money.  Something though that really says “wish we could be together.”

Many of you may know about Tim Holtz’s 12 Tags of Christmas.  Well, this is my tag on that…okay, bad play on words.  This is my take on that.   While his work is gorgeous, it’s much more time consuming than I have to spend on it.

So I’m doing the 12 Days of Christmas.  ♫♪On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a partridge in a pair tree♪♫.  (be glad you can’t hear me singing because, well, I’ve been “complimented” in some not so nice ways about my singing.  Let’s just say Simon only wishes he was still on American Idol so he could unleash his British snarkiness on me and my not so talented voice).

Okay, I digress.  Back to the subject on hand.  This was a project I went into with the intention of it not being exceptionally time consuming, and it wasn’t.  About 2 hours for 3 sets (I have three sets of parents to send to).

My idea here is that each day I will mail one tag to our parents.  Each day, while we can’t be with them this holiday season, they’ll still receive a bit of cheer in the  mail.  And who doesn’t love happy mail instead of bills?  I know I do!!!  They can hang them on the tree or wherever tickles their fancy.  Before Christmas, they will have an array of different heart warming tags to do something with.  I’m leaving that to them.   Actually, I think I’ll send a binder ring in the last envelope so they can make a “mini album”  when Christmas is over.

I found these tags at Craft Warehouse.  I bought two packages of chipboard and one of clear (because there are only 5 per package, you need more than 2 packs).

On the clear ones, be sure to remove the blue film cover.

I used StazOn ink (especially on the acrylic).

But the best part..... the complete goodness of Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas. I think this is my favorite Christmas line of all time. Really.

I printed of small pictures, about 1.5 x 2 inches. You could also probably print off contact pictures from your photo gallery if you aren't comfortable using Photoshop. Then I set to work. I didn't really do anything special or consistent, I just put together what seemed appropriate for each picture.

This was my favorite tag of all of them. I think it was just as much because of the picture. Let me just suggest to you all to not take pictures on the railroad tracks. Let's just say we had a visit from some law enforcement and I'll leave it at that....:p I do also really like the acrylic because you can have more dimension. You can have dimension in front and you can build dimension behind for a really awesome look!

I’m off to go drop these bad boys in the mail!  Enjoy your day.