14 tags and the Cookies are on the Way for Finals! Also Freebie links!

     Well, you're probably wondering were I've been. the party's over and no word from me. I did also have a birthday this week and then I heard then some of my college students were on their way home this weekend!!! Yikes! The cookies haven't gone out, what is happening with this thing called time? Now I don't know what is happen to the college system, but it seems some of them just had to write mostly papers, instead of actually taking finals. What's with that. Don't they know it takes me time to make the 14 tags and mail the cookies? It takes days just to go over all of the possibilities of things that could be used on a tag!

     I finally narrowed it down to cutting the front of the tag with the Cricut's Christmas Cheer cartridge using the Joy tag. I used Design Studio to size it and lay it out with 3 tags on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of cardstock. Seemed like a good idea, until I went to cut the solid back and Design Studio can't hide the cuts (contours) of the word JOY to make a solid tag, so I had to do the backs with the Gypsy and due to the way the one program allows you to do the size verses the other, the backs are just a bit smaller. Should have used the Gypsy for both parts. The Baby Jesus in the manger is an SVG purchased from Svgcuts.com and is part of the set O Holy Night and cut it with Sure Cuts A Lot. You can find the link on my sidebar. The sentiment is a digital image from Meljen's Designs that I got as a freebie. You can find her images here. She usually has freebies on Mondays. The red paper is a digital paper freebie from Papercraft Inspirations Issue 94 (online). Go here and the click downloads to check out all of their goodies ;- ) Are you beginning to see a bit of a trend, ha ha. I love freebies! The green paper, between the front and back tag is from Sue at PSP Crafting Gallery. You can find her freebies and those of some others here.  The final freebie is the ticket, which is a Member freebie (membership is free), from Crafter's Companion on the UK site, here. It's part of the Nov. set.  The digital freebies include papers, digital ribbons, tags, buttons and other elements all designed to go together. There is a new set every month. Most of the tag was embossed with Sizzix's Snowflake folder from the Christmas set (thanks hubby for helping out!) Yes, my DH know how to run the Big Kick ;- ) Everything was inked with distress inks to make them pop a bit and there is glitter pen and white gel pen on the holly berries.

     On the back, the gold metallic embossed sentiment is from Hero Arts and the rest is inked with Fired Brick distress ink.  The ribbon is from Michaels.

And here they are with their cookies, waiting to get boxed up.

     Here are a couple of photos of the food from our party. We did it mostly potluck this year for the first time. Yummy!

And finally, this is what you might have taken home if you participated in our White Elephant ;- )

     Thanks for dropping by and making all the way through the post ;- ) Have a wonderful weekend and please leave a comment before you go. They really mean so much to  me!