Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop Day 2

WooHoo! It's Day 2 of the Kickin' Off Christmas Blog Hop. Hope you are enjoying all of the fabulous projects using products from Chomas Creations mini gel pen and marker holders and the fab embossing tip, iCopic and SP&Company Stamp line and be sure to comment on each and every post to increase your chances of winning the prizes along the way. If you've arrived from Amber's Blog you're on the right track. If not, you might was to start at the beginning to hear about the special giveaway on Amy's Blog and the fabulous Black Friday prices on all of her wonderful merchandise. Hurry though, the prices are only good through 11:59 pm EST tonight!

For my project today I've created custom gift wrap using the mini gel pen holder and Cricut Design Studio. I have to admit, I really had no idea the time it would actually take to fill a 12x12 page using the words Merry Christmas (from Plantin Schoolbook roly poly font) but once I got started, I was determined to finish.

I typed each word separately because in the end, I wanted Merry in one color and Christmas in another. That required 3 full pages in Design Studio and tons of cutting and pasting. This first shot from Design Studio is the entire 12x12 mat filled with Merry Christmas.

Then, in order to have Merry in Red, and Christmas in green, I had to cut and paste all of the Merrys onto one page and the Christmas' to another. I did hide the contours of the letters that were off the margins when I finally began drawing to make sure the glue on the mat didn't gum up my pens. First I loaded the mini gel pen with the red and clicked "cut" to draw the Merry page. Then removed the holder and changed the pen to green (very carefully so as not to drop it on my paper) and drew again on the Christmas page. I really thought the paper came out cool, but did not anticipate how long it would actually take to do the full page. Let's just say you might plan to eat breakfast, exercise, shower, do your hair, etc. instead of just waiting around for the Cricut because I forgot that Design Studio has a mind of it's own when it comes to speed. It takes it's own sweet time. Not necessarily practical, but if the wrap were customized with a person's name? Pretty darn cool.

For the tag I used the Embossing tip and 10 Seconds Studio metal. I taped the red side down on the embossing mat and embossed the jingle bell from the Christmas Solutions cartridge. Then I sanded the embossing to show the silver underneath and cut the bell out with my scissors. I used the blackout version of the same cut (because the shadow cut out the bottom of the bell) and sized it larger for the back of the tag.

Then I used the Mini gel pens and holder to write the To: and From: on the back. (Again 3 mats in Design Studio or your gypsy). One for cutting, and one for each word because I wanted one red and one green.) The embossed metal easily attaches to card stock with Scor-tape. Please scroll down to Day one if you're interested in a link to a tutorial about using the gel pens (Mine is actually with Cricut markers, but they work the same way) And also the entire list of hoppers in case you get lost. Rough day today, and I'm honestly too tired to type it all in and link it again, but if you're following the hop, your next stop is iCopic. Thanks so much for visiting and for your sweet comments. Happy Thanksgiving to you ALL! xxD