12 Tags of Christmas Reindeer Tag

Hello and I'm so glad to share my 12 Tags of Christmas Tag 3 with you, inspired by the beautiful designs of Linda Coughlin, from the blog the Funkie Junkie.  I was so thrilled to see how Linda created her "Christmas sweater" background from Tim Holtz' thinlet dies, but again I don't have these products.  I thought I'd share a little more of my process with you on this one.  Below I pulled out all of my "stripe" stamps.  Basic Grey, I don't know about the middle set, and BoBunny.  The red rubber is an UM by Lost Coast - not a stripe, but needed to be in the design because I love it and never use it!

I took my largest acrylic block and started lining up the stamps tightly, but not overlapping - important!  I tried to get close to the length of my tag, but left enough to use the UM as a stripe at the bottom.  The important part of this is to use a reverse inking technique, meaning to ink your stamp and then put the paper over the stamp instead of stamping down on the paper.  Gently rub all areas of the design, without moving the paper.  It is super hard to get an even impression from a stamp this large without doing reverse stamping.  You could stamp each line individually, but it might be hard to line them up on the paper, plus the cool part is that it's one and done and cleaning the stamps is much easier.

I chose to emboss with Judiken's tinsel gold embossing powder.  This bottle must be 15 years old!  EP lasts forever!  If you're having problems, it may be your ink.  I love Versamark for embossing.  :)

I painted the chipboard reindeer (Michael's dollar bin from the other year) with black gesso then direct-to-paper (DTP) a gold and white ink pad to tone it down.  I embossed the sentiment in white and used DTP with a white pigment pad to create the chalkboard look.

I added the Tattered Poinsettia flower from Basic Grey paper and the greenery from scrap ink clean up paper.  The plaid is a fabric sticker by Yellow Bicycle.

I just love the chalkboard detail and how the EP sparkles in the light...  To see all the posts in this series click HERE.  Hop on over to Linda's Funkie Junkie Boutique HERE to start your Christmas wishlist!

I'm linking up to the Funkie Junkie for the 12 Tags of Christmas challenge HERE, to Addicted to Stamps for their Bling/Glitter challenge HERE, and to Christmas Stampin' All Year Long for their Set of Tags challenge HERE.