A Wonderful Life!

As a Design Team Ginger, I have some art posted on today's Gingersnap Creations Challenge: SP6: Once in a Blue Moon Ginspiration.   I'm challenging participants to CASE their Favorite Blogosphere
Find and Make it their Own.

I chose to CASE the very first tag in the Tim Holtz 12 Tags of Christmas.  It was the one thing that called to me the most this past month.

I stuck with my original plan to duplicate my own Victorian house by using Tim's grungeboard haunted house and running it through the embossing machine with the new Tim Holtz Sissex Texture Fades:  Bricked on the bottom and Wood Grain on the top.  I added a weather vane from Tim's Idea-ology metals.  The windows are backed with a piece of thick plastic packaging from Maya Road.  Ranger Distress Inks include Fired Brick, Weathered Wood, Black Soot, and Vintage Photo. I also added a little ColorBox brown.  The chimney smoke is a bit of USArtQuest Dicrofiber.

Several days after Tim posted his first tag, I watched the movie, It's A Wonderful Life.  I had seen bits and pieces of the movie before, but this was the first time I'd seen the entire movie from start to finish.  I now know why it's such a holiday classic!  My creative light bulb went off during one particular scene.  After a run on the Bailey Savings and Loan in which George gives away all of his honeymoon savings to his patrons, his new bride Mary calls him home to dinner.  He doesn't know where home is because she's just acquired a rickety house--a real fixer upper.  He arrives in a pouring rain to his new home and wife. 

I decided then and there that Tag #1 was going to be my artistic version of this scene from the movie.  I added Tim Holtz' umbrella man stamped onto grungepaper, but removed the umbrella, as George has only his hat to protect him from the rain.  I think this is the perfect stamp because of the stock market numbers in the design. A very vintage pipe cleaner candy cane replaces the umbrella.  I was happy to have the bell on it because in the movie, George's daughter states every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.  And we movie fans know all about Clarence earning his wings by helping George.

I love my Martha Stewart fence punch but it wouldn't punch through grungepaper so I used regular black card stock.  I would have preferred something heavier in weight to wrap around the tree.  I cut off the bats and added Green Patina Perfect Pearls to make the wrought iron fence look worn. 

I've been admiring how Lisa Pace uses those bottle brush trees in her projects, so I put one of those in the yard.

Since in the scene it's raining, for my tag background, I used Distress Ink in Broken China, Tumbled Glass, and little Faded Jeans. I embossed my tag with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder and highlighted the dots with Distress Ink in Weathered Wood. For grass, I added some of my leftover shelf liner that I had painted with Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber in Pearl.

Wikipedia has a public domain photo from the movie which I downloaded and then added the title. I stapled this onto the tag and added a bit of wool trim.

Thanks for visiting and reading about how I made this tag my own.  There are several other challenges by the other Gingers so I hope you'll choose one and play along with us.  You have until January 25, 2011, to make something and link back to Gingersnap Creations.  Ten Ginger Gems will be selected on January 27.

I'm also posting this at
Simon Says Stamp and Show Something from Yesteryear
Vicki Romaine's Challenge #8 Life In Times Past at the Cheerful Stamp Pad sponsored by Unity Stamps