Cozy Tag with Nichol!

Happy First Day of Fall!

Christmas is three months away so it's the perfect time to start your holiday paper crafting! Today I have an oversized gift tag adorned with stamped, colored and die cut Christmas images perfect for adding to a package, a plate of goodies for a neighbor or even adhering to a card to send to a loved one. Mama Elephant just released the Cozy Christmas Creative Cuts dies to coordinate with the super adorable Cozy Christmas Stamp Set.

I created a Christmas scene by combining Santa, the tree, and gifts from Cozy Christmas with the car from Carnival Toppers and teddy bear from Carnival Cupcakes. The oversize tag and banner are from the new Tag A Lot Creative Cuts die collection.

I stamped all the images to color on smooth white cardstock and colored them in with Copic Markers.

For Santa I used the follwing colors to color in his skin:

To color in the red for Santa's suit, I started with R14.

Next, I added my mid-tone red color, R46. I tend to add less to begin. I can go back and pull in more of this color as needed after adding my darkest color.

For my darkest red color, R39, I used it to add some shadowing:

After blending, here's sweet Santa (pretend I colored in his pants and for that matter his nose too....)

To color in the "white" on Santa's suit and beard I used these Cool Gray Copic colors:

To color in the tree I like to use the feathering technique starting with the lightest yellow-green Copic color, YG93.

Next, I feathered in my darkest yellow-green color, YG99, from the top of each layer of the tree.

Next I filled in with my mid-tone yellow-green Copic Marker, YG97.

To add some detail shadowing under each "layer" of the tree I added some Cool Gray 7.

I colored in the smaller images and die cut them with the coordinating Cozy Christmas Creative Cuts, Carnival Toppers Creative Cuts and Carnival Cupcakes Creative Cuts.

For the background of the jumbo tag, I masked off the stitched border using post it tape and repeatedly stamped the greeting "merry and bright" from the Polar Pals stamp set to give my tag a subtle text background.

I stamped the greeting from Cozy Christmas on the banner from Tags A Lot and embossed it with gold embossing powder.