I'm in the Funkie Junkie Christmas Tag challenge!

I am so delighted that this year I can actually play along with Linda Coughlin's inspiration Christmas tag challenge!  The challenge is sponsored by Linda's wonderful Funky Junkie Boutique, one of my favorite stores because of her wonderful service and quick turn-around (not to mention the great products!)

Here is Tag #1, inspired by Linda's use of poinsettias, one of my favorite flowers -  I never have them in the house, though, as my mischievous cat likes to chew greenery and this is poisonous - so I am making do with some paper versions of my favorite white poinsettias on this tag.

I started with a #10 tag from Linda's shop, and covered it with foil tape.  Then I used one of the very large Teresa Collins embossing folders in my Big Shot Plus.  Although regular-sized folders do not quite cover the length of the tag, with a pattern like this, it would be easy to line it up again to get the tag fully embossed.

Next, I generously applied Ranger Alcohol Inks, in Red Pepper and Lettuce, letting them drip here and there, and adding more as needed to make that happen.  The dark areas are the brown blend that results from blending red and green....but I liked the grunge look so let it happen.

I lightly sanded the raised bits to further expose the silver, and then added diluted Picket Fence stain and let it noodle around.....  I like the red, white and green combo.... but it ended up covering a lot of the nice patina from the inks,  so I wiped most of it off.

 I cut several sets of flowers from the Tim Holtz Tattered Poinsettia steel rule die, and them smooshed them around in a mix of Picket Fence and Antique Linen Distress Paints.

 While they were still a bit damp, I scrunched them up to give some texture.

And once dry, I applied a very light wash here and there with Silk Acrylic Glaze in Pretty Peridot and Lime Green.  I also sprayed one large petal set with Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron Distress Sprays, to make the leaves.

Once all the petal sets were dry, I layered them up, twisting them to create dimension, and added purchased stamens, gluing all the layers together with matte medium.   Then I glued the finished flowers down to the tag, using a clear liquid glue.

On the final tag, you can see just the littlest  bit of white here and there from the Picket Fence Spray.....

 Next, I added a small bow made of green and red ribbons from my stash.... you could also color plain seam binding with ink to get a similar effect.

I wanted a sentiment, and this bit took me quite a while to figure out.  I had not staged everything to figure it out ahead of time (mistake!)..... so the "Noel" I thought I would use from this set (657470) turned out to be too large - had I reversed the larger and small flowers, it likely would have worked.

Meanwhile, back to the drawing board....

Maybe these would work.  The black alone got lost on the tag, so I thought to emboss it with Lindy's Stamp Gang Caesar's Gold, and then add a bit of Stampendous Vintage Olive in the Tinsel EP line.

 However, these die-cut words are quite slender, and once I applied the gold, I didn't see a need to add the green, as it would very likely not show up.  Even the gold lettering got lost, so I ended up cutting another set of words from plain black cardstock, offsetting them a tad from the top words to create a shadow.  They still do not show up as much as I would like, but better than any other idea I had!

The shadowing is hard to see here, and again, by not thinking ahead I caused myself a lot of extra work - I should have cut the top words by making them as a "sticker" (using double-sided tape or Ken Oliver's Stick It ) and then embossing them.  Once done, I could have readily applied them to the "shadow" lettering.  As it was, I ended up using little dots of matte medium - worked but a lot messier!

 Thank you so much for stopping by, and please do leave a comment - I love hearing your thoughts!

I am placing this into Tag One of the Funky Junkie Twelve Tags of Christmas, and the The Emerald Creek Dares Bits of Cheer challenge

xxx Lynn