It's Advent Time!!

Thank you Jennie and Hels for inviting me to join the Creative Design Team, I have already had a ball on my project for this month. Christmas is always a very busy time for everybody and I am sure I am not the only one who, come Christmas Day, is frazzled and worn out! So I have devised an 'Advent Calendar' just for me. Not a Choccie everyday, but a few 'me time' treats. Each day on my own blog I will be picking a tag to show you and sharing a treat with you, along with showing you how I have used the gorgeous stamps Jennie sent me to use and some of the fabulous products she sells.

So here is my tree - I have got to admit that you can's see too much on the photo as its so large, but it looks great on my wall. 

traditionally you start your advent calendar on the 1st of December - well who wants to be traditional? Not us at the Artistic stamper! The blog was a bit busy yesterday announcing the new monthly challenge, so I opened my tag on my ownsome (all together now..... ahhhhh......) but I'll share it with you today. All the tags are made using mountboard, which is nice and stiff and will withstand alot of battering - which is just as well, I am not a delicate girl as you will find out! I love using UTEE and for this tag I covered the whole piece of MB (which was a dark cream colour ro start with,  with Versamark and covered with with a couple of layers of clear UTEE, heating it between layers to melt the powder. If you are quick you can get the second layer on whilst the first is still warm (but mind your fingers!!) but if it does cool down you can give it another coating of Versamark. I then sprinkled on various colours of coloured UTEE - you can use ordinary embossing powders at this stage if you wish. I had the AS Harlequin Background stamp ready inked with versamark, when the UTEE was still hot I pressed the stamp into it and allowed it to cool - you MUST wait for the UTEE to harden before you remove the stamp or else you will make a right mess of it! Then I inked the edges of the card and edged it with a gold UTEE, get you heatgun nice and hot and try to work quickly, just directing the nozzle at the edge, otherwise you are in danger of remelting the triple embossed area and losing your stamped image.

The main embellishment is a large A6 size stamp from the Victorian Christmas Plate that I stamped onto shrink plastic and shrunk! Even though it is a very detailed stamp the images still came out really well once reduced in size.

Now what was yesterdays treat?? Well I met a friend to swap the kids Christmas pressies and I had my favourite treat at my favourite teashop of a cheese scone and a long natter with my mate Sands.

Each day I will be 'opening' advent calendar on my personal blog - NicksArtyStuff  so please feel free to join in with our daily treat!

Here is today's tag....please pop over and see how I made it

Thanks for looking, I will see you later this month with another - but very different - project

Nicks xxx