Hi, crafty friends. I wanted to share this yesterday, because it was the 24th and nine months left until Christmas Eve, but I didn’t finish this before the sun set, and I’m no good at flat lay photography in the dark, so I’m sharing today instead.

I colored and fussy cut Especially for you from the 2021 I’ll Be Home for the Holidays collection illustrated by Stacey Yacula for Purple Onion Designs. I left a white trim around the edge to preserve the tail on the mouse and also have an easier time cutting the ribbon that adorns the present.

For the background I used the largest die in the Stitched Traditional Tag STAX die set from My Favorite Things and die cut two of these from Blue Breeze cardstock from My Favorite Things, before gluing them back to back. On the back I simply stamped a To/From stamp and on the front, I used the Falling Snow stencil from Simon Says Stamp along with some paste for a subtle snowy effect in the background.

I mounted the image on foam tape and added big die cut numbers above them using the By the numbers die set from Papertrey Ink. I die cut four of each number from Cornflower cardstock from My Favorite Things, and the top layer from the same cardstock I used for the background. I stamped a sentiment from a Norsk Stempelblad AS stamp set using Cornflower ink from MFT onto one of the numbers. I stacked the numbers, offsetting the top layer slightly and adhered them to the tag. I even put foam tape on the back of the number 4 to pop it up a little bit more and to add interest and dimension, before finishing off the tag with some ribbon of unknown origin, twine from Whisker Graphics in the color Blueberry and a snowflake charm.

I used quite a few colors for the fur on the squirrel, but the rest of the colors are pretty basic.