12 tags of Christmas Funky Junkie style

Hello all, - and welcome! As many of you know, the wonderful Linda Mcloughlin aka The Funky Junkie, has been hosting her 12 tags of Christmas challenge for a number of years now.

Having been away for Christmas in the last few years I have not been able to take part, but this year I am determined to do so. Instead of making tags though, I am making cards, - here are the first 3:

You can read all about the challenge HERE, so I won't go into too much detail on my blog, but show you the ones I have done one by one:

This one is based on Linda's first one. I was inspired by her colour scheme, the use of stars and the black trees, though I lightened mine up a bit with some  "snow" and sparkle.

I don't have many of the products Linda used, so just created my own version.

My sentiment was created with the help of one of Tim's new stencils. I used  clear texture paste and when dry highlighted with distress crayon in walnut stain and some treasure gold. Linda's original can be found HERE

Here is number two. Again I was mostly inspired by Linda's colour scheme and clever use of stencils, though I don't have the same ones. I also used a slightly darker red (a mix of barn door and aged mahogany)

I used the tree stencil in a different way (adding some snow again) and also chose a different word from the same die set Linda used.

I actually stencilled one of the trees on a separate piece of paper and fussy cut it out (this really because I made a mess of the first stencilled tree, I mostly managed to cover it up I think).
You can see Linda's beautiful original tag number two HERE

And finally here is number three. This one is quite, quite different from Linda's, though again I was inspired by her colour scheme, particularly the black background and the subtle use of patina colour, though I created my patina in a very different way. I also liked the clever idea of adding embossing ink through a stencil and then embossing in gold.

Whereas Linda created her patina just with inks, for my globe I used my Ten Second Studio Verday paint kit, which I have had for ages and ages, but had never used before, so this was the perfect opportunity.

For my liking the black and gold was a bit too stark, so I added some touches of red. Linda's classy black and gold version can be found HERE.

Well that's it for today, 3 more cards for my box..... This for me is the perfect way to get my Christmas card inspiration, I just love this challenge. And if you don't know it, do make sure to check it out! The challenge is of course sponsored by the Funky Junkie Boutique and there are some fabulous prizes to be won!

Thanks you for visiting today and stay crafty!!