Sweet Treats Just in Time for the Holidays...

I wanted to share with you how I make a simple homemade Christmas treat into something just a little more special by adding a handmade Gift Tag.  It is an easy way to quickly dress up a holiday gift and I find that adding these tags turn these simple, homey gifts into a personal labor of love.  

I created all these tags using the myStamp Box HoHoHo and Happy Birthday sets and an easy to do ink-resist technique.

First I colored my tag using Ranger's Distress Inks in a light coating of red and green, you want your base ink color to be lighter than the final color you will be using.  Use a heatgun to ensure your tag is completely dry before you start your stamping for the embossing portion.   Once the ink was dry I frist stamped and embossed the HoHoHo with a white embossing powder; I then stamped and embossed the Jingle Bells useing a clear embossing powder.  At this point the sentiments are still a little faded out so I intensified the red and green colors by coloring over the tag with my Ranger distress stain, but if you don't have any stain you can use your original distress ink colors to add more layers and intesify the color.  Any stain (or ink) that gets onto your emobssed words can be rubbed off using a soft cloth or paper towl as the embossing resists the ink (hence the INK RESIST technique) and now my words POP right off the tag!

For this tag with the gifts I used only a clear embossing powder over a yellow and red base.. you can see that the background wording is more subtle here... Also, I LOVE that these gift images are from the myStamp Box Happy Birthday stamp set, but since it's a Christmas tag you can't really tell.

I created this tag from the Happy Birthday stamp set as well, and this tag was so quick and easy I know I am going to do this again!  I inked my tag using three colors of distress ink and dried it with my heatgun.  Then starting at the bottom, I stamped each line in a watermark ink and embossed using a white emossing powder.  I decorated the candles and gift images using different colored stickles  and what a cute little tag it is!

Now to create this look I again inked my tag using two colors of Ranger distress ink and then covered the entire tag in a very thin coat of metalic silver paint so the ink still showed thorough.  I stamped and embossed the sentiment in a very black sparkly embossing powder and added a piece of paper ribbon.  I stamped, colored and cut out the myStamp Box images and used popdots to adhere them to the tag.  A finishing of stickles and CTMH Liquid Glass and it's done!  I used the pearl stickles on Santa's Beard and Liquid Glass on his boots and belts.

I hope these cute little tags will give you the inspiration to create your own!