Hope you are enjoying the December DeNami Blog Hop!

This month, the challenge was to make gift wrapping - what a great challenge!

You should have arrived here from Carol Hartery's wonderful blog. 

If not, head on over to the DeNami Blog for the master list of hop participants. 

You'll want to stay on track… leaving a comment on every blog along the way (including the DeNami Blog) gives you a chance to win one of THREE $20 DeNami gift certificates!!!! Another $20 gift certificate will be given to a randomly chosen blog hop participant! You have until December 12, 2011, 11:59 pm PST, to leave comments on all the blogs (to be eligible for a prize).

Despite this being an awesome challenge, I don't have a lot of gifts to wrap this year. I've mostly got gift certificates to give with the exception of some. Plus, we're flying to a different province and airlines tend to frown upon wrapped gifts nowadays (for obvious reasons). So I stuck to tags - they are definitely something I'll use though.

I was a little all-over-the-place with the tags, trying different things here and there. I did make a few similar tags…well, I'll let you see for yourself :)

For this tag, I used DeNami's medium lacy flake and stamped it on the iridescent blue card stock for some "shimmah". Then I put the sentiment across the top, leaving room to write the "to" and "from".

For the next tag, I broke out my much neglected Distress Inks. I stamped the Medium Lacy Flake (yup, again - I seriously LOVE this stamp!) and embossed it in white. Then I went to town with Concord Grape Distress Ink. To top it off, I stamped the sentiment in turquoise ink on vellum, and stitched it to the tag. I really like how this turned out :) Oh yeah, often when I use Distress Inks, the backs of things that I distress tend to get quite messy so I cover the back with a post-it to keep it clean. Worked like a charm :) Now the back can be used for writing!

Now for the similar tags... 

For this one, I used DeNami's Ornaments Stamp set….

…for this one I used DeNami's Star Swirl….

…DeNami's Ornaments again…

…and finally, my fav, the Medium Lacy Flake ;)  Don't you love the ribbon treatment? The inspiration came from my blog friend, Karen Baker - she made a tag for the May Arts blog HERE and I just LOVED it!!! 

That's it from here:) Off to your next stop, which is the lovely, talented Amy Smidebush! Happy Hopping!!!

I used the following DeNami Products on this card;

Leaf Green Cardstock

Happy Halloween

The photos in the gorgeous inspiration graphic come from a couple of different sources; 

- Bouquet

- Wreath: Etsy

- Pops: BeauCoup

Fall is just around the corner and these colors are just the perfect inspiration to get your fall on!!!

I wanted to do a watercolor-type effect with leaves using watercolor paper (don't you love the texture?!) and distress inks. First, I spritzed the paper lightly with water. When I figured out that the spritzing made the paper a bit too wet (and thus too little detail and too much watercolor effect), I decided to try a wet paper towel laid over the watercolor paper for a few seconds. This gave it just the right amount of moisture for some detail in the leaves with a subtle watercolor look. I used the rock n' roll technique to ink up my leaves, using scattered straw first then spiced marmalade around the edges. Then I stitched a few cross stitches in the opposite corner for a little home-spun touch :)