A Few Quick Tags

No, not like this one.  One year I made all the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas- the kind with 47 steps, 102 art supplies (at least 75% of those things you don't have).  And that would cause fatal harm to anyone who threw the tag away on Wrapping Paper Mountain.  I never actually put any of them on a package to avoid the fatal-harm part.

I just finished a pile of very quick tags, the kind that are made to go on gifts and (gasp), even be tossed without sending me into mourning.  

I cut out the card stock tags with a Sizzix die  - it has three different size tags.  Then some simple stamping, white pen highlights, Stickles stars,  butcher twine ties and done!

I love these Tim Holtz stamps and the look of white pen highlights .  My go-to white pen is a Sakura Gel pen because the ink flows easily and is very opaque.

I love this Iced Pine Distress Ink .  It's a soft dark sage, less bold than Pine or many other greens.  

These were inspired by some I saw on Diana Trout's blog.  How could I resist Washi tape trees?  She has a very detailed tutorial, but basically you lay strips of Washi on a piece of paper (I used printer paper) and then cut out tree shapes and glue them onto the tags.  The paper backing holds the strips together  and stabilizes the tape, so don't remove it before gluing.

Keep the strips of tape very close together (or slightly overlapping) so none of the background paper peeks through.

Diana recommends cutting a template and tracing around it to get the tree shapes, so that's what I did.  Honestly,  I'd eliminate that step and just free - hand cut the triangles if I make these again.  We're not going for geometric perfection here!  ( And yes, the Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt mac and cheese is  yummy, but really, the reduced quilt is all about portion-control - they aren't fooling me).

I used tags I had in my stash; some had been dragged through extra ink from other projects, but most were just plain.

Each tree got a little trunk and some pen doodling to give them something to stand on .  Some got Stickles and some stamped stars.

Now I guess if you could also cut out varying widths of Washi tape and stick the tape directly on the tag, making a tree shape and  forgoing the laying down of the strips and cutting out the tree shapes.   That seems like way too much precise cutting for me. Or, I've seen some trees on Pinterest made with torn strips of tape.  But you do know what Washi means?  It's Japanese for "doesn't stick".   Just kidding!!  But really, since Washi is designed to be reposition-able,  I  wouldn't count on tiny little strips staying put.  Better go with Diana's method.

Quick, easy, no new supplies, Washi tape AND no one needs to die?  Perfect.