Christmas Tags - Side Order

 Oh these little Christmas Side Order dies are so cute and make delightfully fun tags that can be used on presents, cards, placeholders, or even made into ornaments.

I started by using the Mini Shifter Stencil #36 from the Halloween release because they are classic designs that work for any occasion, and also because at the time the Christmas Shifter Stencils #37 hadn’t been released yet. These styles were perfect for my tags though.  I used Distress Inks and Distress Watercolor Cardstock for these tags.   

**Let me note here that not all watercolor paper is equal** I only use Distress Watercolor Cardstock now because I stamped a ton of images for a card swap this summer on a cheaper brand that I purchased at a hobby store in a pad and cut to size. I had a horrible time water coloring on it. My results were nothing near what I get with Distress, so now to save time and money I only use Distress. 

I did two color schemes for the two different side orders  and I included some solid colors that I embossed with the mini embossing folder included with the dies.

The background tags and the smaller shapes the dies sit are are both from the Labels dies set.  I know I have said this before but it is seriously one of my favorite die sets! There are so many great shapes and lots of sizes! It is a definite must have in your die cutting library.

I made sure that the smaller label dies that the Christmas shape was going to sit on were the solid, embossed pieces.

I hand cut the little banners from left over bits of the stenciled papers and added the sentiment that is part of the Christmas Side Order.

Then I was inspired to try this. I was looking at the Santa die and I realized that he could easily become Yukon Cornelius if I just colored the die parts a little differently. So that's what I did and I love it! I even added his yellow earmuffs. 

Yukon and Rudolph are so cute.

 The sentiment on this one is a made up of a combination of the Christmas Script dies for Merry and the Lowercase Cutout Alphanumeric for Misfits

Once you get the stenciling and embossing done these tags move pretty quickly.  I also cut out all the little pieces and parts from Distress Watercolor Cardstock and Distress Mixed Media Heavystock and then colored them and assembled them before I started the tags.