Keeping Christmas { We "tissue" a Merry Christmas!}

 "I will honor Christmas in my heart...and try to keep it all the year." -Charles Dickens

It's the 25th and that means it is time for another installment of my "Keeping Christmas" series! I had so much fun all month long sewing and crafting away! Christmas seems to be a time for "punny" neighbor gifts,etc. and this is one of my favorite "punny" gifts to give at Christmas time. They are practical and useful, but cute as well. This is the type of gift that is perfect to give out at the office, book club, sewing group, circle of friends, teachers and more.

 Spring came early to Utah, but early in the month we had a most wonderful and unexpected snow storm so I jumped in the car and headed to my favorite fabric store and knew that this was the day to start! I picked up a nice stack of fun, festive fabrics, but nothing that was specifically Christmas. I want the recipient to feel like it is a useful gift all year long. I was careful to pick prints, colors and patterns that would work nicely with a Christmas tag, though. 

 Once I was home, I popped in a Christmas CD and got to work cutting the fabric. I have used the tutorial which you can find HERE. I have used this pattern in the past but lost the link when we switched computers. I was desperate to find it to include with this post and after some google searching I found it! It is a great tutorial that you will find helpful if you would like to make some.It is the same tutorial that I used for THESE including the cute joke she used!

 When it was all said and done...I ended up with 34 tissue cozies! 34! That's 34 gifts that I don't have to stress about come December!

You can see the fun assortment of fabrics that I picked out. 

 I packaged them up in cellophane bags with ribbon to compliment each fabric.

 34 tissue cozies means 34 tags....what? Yeah...I didn't quite imagine it being such an ordeal! LOL! Like I said before, I definitely couldn't have taken this much time during December! I diecut all of the tags from Kraft cardstock using a PTI tag sale die. I ordered 2 new ones recently specifically because I knew I would be doing a lot of tag making this year. I also diecut the word "Christmas" as well, but after about 18, I just COULD.NOT.CUT.ONE. MORE!!! LOL! I decided to just use a partial sentiment stamp with the word "Christmas". 

I used the "Christmas critters" stamp set that I got last holiday season but didn't get to use it as much as I was hoping. It got a workout for this project! Ha Ha! You can see all of the cute mice and their holiday accoutrements waiting to be assembled.The "we "tissue" a Merry Christmas" portion was computer generated and printed using grey ink to compliment the mice.

 I stamped the mugs, scarves, gifts and sweaters in colors that were reflected in the fabric to give everything a cohesive feel. The tags are threaded with baker's twine for a festive touch.

 The heart images on the mugs have some stickles for a sparkly touch that I just love, especially at Christmas!

The "Christmas" diecut was attached to the tag using a glue pen. I like using adhesive like that for tiny, detailed images. You an also see here how all of the colors work together.

Here is another shot of the tags and you can see the few that I stamped the word onto rather than the diecut. It think they are both cute and my sanity is saved! LOL! I hope you all have a chance to "Keep Christmas" this year. Please comment or email me with the link of your projects! I would love to see what you're up to! I'm also posting on Instagram using the hashtag #keepingchristmas2017 if you'd like to participate that way and I hope you do! Thanks for fluttering by!