Happy Valentine's Day! I made Cupid Hello Kitty themed cookie boxes to share with my "gal-entines" this year.
I found a few cute Cupid Hello Kitty images in my library of Hello Kitty coloring books and converted them into cutting files to piece together for my hinged lid boxes. I used Hello Kitty peeking from behind a cloud for the box front and used a Happy Valentines Day sentiment die from Mama Elephant for the greeting.
Opening the box reveals a pop up scene on the lid inside.
Amazed by the many beautiful and unique pop up packaging designs I've been seeing on Pinterest created to hold expensive Asian cookies and teas, I knew I wanted to give this style of box a try. Of course, my simple two tier pop up can't be compared to the intricate boxes that inspired me, but it was fun trying to figure out how to make one.
I started by using a svg cutting file template for a rectangular hinged lid box with reinforced sides from "Stick and Crop".
After enlarging and altering the original template to create a box 5.25" x 4.5" x 1.5", I created and glued an insert with a depth of 1 inch to the inside of the box to be the platform for the pop up. Hello Kitty and clouds were then popped up with strips of cardstock glued in as cubes.
Boxes were filled with homemade shortbread cookies for special friends. This was a fun box to learn to make. Thinking that next time I may want to try this style of box again, but maybe with a different type of pop up mechanism inside.
Today I want to share some of the fun and crafty goodies I received from my creative friends to celebrate the New Year.
Every year my mom makes plastic canvas refrigerator magnets to celebrate the lunar animal of the year and shares them with family at our New Year family reunion lunch. This year she had a difficult time finding a plastic canvas pattern for a snake that could be sized down for a refrigerator magnet, so instead she converted a cross stitch pattern I found online into one she could use for plastic canvas. I especially liked how she added a fancy frame and gold cording to accent the snake.
My sweet friend Lorna put together a ssss-super kawaii daruma snake paper piecing to embellish a wrapper for a treat package of ramen. She also created cute gift tags using a print and cut image of a Japanese ceramic snake bell with a gold metallic shadow layer.
My dear friend Bev created this show stopping pop up Year of the Snake Chinese New Year card. As always, her interactive cards have the "wow factor" and are amazing. If you'd like to try to recreate this fun card, the video tutorial by Peter Dahmen Papierdesign can be found here on You Tube.
This adorable miniature hanging paper lantern and paper pieced Pochacco treat box were put together by my super talented friend Kris. The tiny paper lantern is very cute, embellished with shimmery gold blossoms and tassel. It's just large enough to hold a tea light and so pretty with the light shining through its vellum panels. The tutorial and free svg cutfile for the lantern can be found at Craft with Sarah website. I think Pochacco looks just too irresistible dressed in his Mandarin jacket, holding a string of firecrackers to celebrate the New Year!
I'm very fortunate to have a circle of creative friends who always generously share their handmade treasures with me. Looking forward to another fun year of crafty inspiration from them!
Here's our annual Lunar Calendar/Thank You Card/New Years Card for 2025 that we sent out to family and friends. This year I decided to try something a little different than the usual top or side fold card and instead, made a card with a pocket to slide the decorated calendar magnet into.
I used gold metallic foil board for the base of the card and red pearlescent text weight paper to create the pocket over it. To give the pocket a festive look, I hot foiled gold fireworks onto the red papers using the Spellbinders Glimmer System prior to trimming. An Elizabeth Craft Designs word die was used to cut the "Happy New Year" from gold foil board, and I used Make the Cut Design program to create a shadow layer for it.
My 2025 Year of the Snake calendar design was inspired by the work of several talented graphic artists like Atlantico54 and Baby Sofja. Cutting file for the snake was created and numbers for the year were traced from Christie font using Make the Cut Design program. Pink blossoms and stamens were cut using Punch Bunch mini punches. Although the design for this year's calendar was simple to piece together, the multiple shadows and layers took a bit of time to cut and assemble. Thankfully, my dear friend Pat came to my rescue to help get nearly 60 of these calendar magnets completed.
One of the problems I ran into making these calendars this year was that my usual supplier for the mini tear off calendars, Impress Rubber Stamps closed their business in 2024. After spending much time searching for an alternate, I purchased mini calendars from Paper Accents because theirs were closest in size to what I had used in the past. They were reasonably priced and came in a package of ten. Unfortunately, all ten calendars came bound together as one pad, and I had a difficult time separating the calendars without pages falling off. I ended up having to glue individual pages back onto several of the calendars, and it's questionable whether those pages will tear off nicely. Definitely will need to start searching for another supplier for my 2026 calendars early this year.
Not a very good photo but since it was the only one I had of all of us together, I used this selfie group photo taken while our daughter and her family were visiting to create the back panel to the pocket card.
Gung Hei Fat Choy! Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Snake. To celebrate, I baked several batches of almond cookies and made twenty of these shadowbox treat holders with handles to put them in to share with friends and family.
To make the box, I used a digital cutting file called "Fold Over Box" designed by Pebbles In My Pocket. I enlarged the size of the original template to create a cube shaped box that was 3.75 inches in height, width, and depth to ensure I could get at least 10 medium sized cookies to fit inside. I added a circular cut out to the template for the front of the box and added clear acetate for the window. A round frame cut from gold glitter cardstock was then glued onto the front of the window.
To add the shadowbox to the window, I first created a square tray with a depth of 1/4 inch. I
adhered a square piece of gold foil board which had been embossed with the "Weaving Blocks" embossing folder from Craft Concepts to the inside of the tray. Cutting file for the paper pieced snake was inspired by littlemandyart and created in Make the Cut. The snake was then added to the tray using foam tape for dimension, and finally, the tray was glued to the inside of the box, behind the window.
On the back of the box, I added a stylized, circular Chinese "fu" character for good luck, cut from gold foil board. Cutting file for this was also created in Make the Cut.
Then, since hubby spent this morning golfing, I packed some cookies for him to share with his golf club members. I got the cute snake in a lion costume image to create the labels from "Shiok Artistry" on Etsy.
I also made several of these decorated "lai see" or red envelopes to pass out with the boxes of cookies.
Inspired by several similar cute Chinese New Year Snake illustrations on Pinterest, I used Make the Cut Design program to create a cutting file of a snake peeking out of a red Chinese money bag.
The gold Asian coins were cut from gold foil board using the "Asian Accessories" die set from Elizabeth Craft Designs. All pieces for the snake and red bag were cut from pearlescent cardstock on the Silhouette Cameo. The snake heads were glued separately onto the envelope flaps so the recipients could lift the heads to access the "gifts" inside.
The good news is that the Year of the Snake promises to bring positive transformation, personal growth and wisdom. Best wishes to all for a year of good health and many happy days of crafting!
This is the card I created to send to our granddaughter together with her Thanksgiving "care package" this year.
I used Marianne Design's Squirrel die together with Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies to decorate the front of the card.
On the inside of the card, I added a pull down panel...
As the panel is pulled downwards, a little raccoon pops up from inside the pumpkin.
I used one of my favorite Karen Burniston pop up die sets, the "Parcel Pop Up" to add this surprise pop up element to my card. Click on the video to watch this fun pop up in action.
The cutting file for the pumpkin was created in Make the Cut Design program. Squirrel and Raccoon were cut and pieced together using dies from Marianne Designs. I used MFT's Grassy Edges die for the grass border, and Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies for the leaves and sentiment.
I added our sentiment to the left side of the card as a "print and cut" using a fancy label svg created in Make the Cut. Being that we live an ocean apart from our granddaughter means we aren't able to spend most holidays together but we hope she'll remember we have her in our hearts and thoughts when she receives this card.
I also quickly put together these treat holder boxes to share with friends we had lunch with earlier this month. Using a svg cutfile from Cuddly Cute Designs called "Wishbone Bear" I pieced together the Pilgrim Bear to add to the front of the boxes.
The template for the treat holder is a simple one; I just made a box that would fit the bottom of the box of Moose Munch Popcorn, making the front and side panels tall enough to join together at the top to tie together with a bow.
Every Thanksgiving, I look forward to receiving a wonderful handmade card from my dear friend Bev. This year her card was this fun Triple Cube Pop Up in beautiful autumnal colors.
Here's what the card looks like from the top...
... and a view of the back. I really love the cute printed paper and layers of matching cardstock Bev chose to create her card, how she used colorful leaves and squash to embellish the front, and especially the way she placed her sentiment inside the two front cubes to pop into view as the card was unfolded.
Thank you for stopping by today. Hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving day.
I have one last Halloween themed post for the year to share the fun goodies I received from my crafty friends.
I absolutely fell in love with this adorable friendly ghost treat box created by sweet friend, Kris! This guy is tall, standing 9 inches high from his cute lime green shoes to the tip of his fancy top hat! The hat is the lid, and look at all the candy he was filled with! Kris used the "Happy Ghost" svg cutfile from Simply Crafty SVGs for this fun box.
The next two treat holders were designed by my super talented friend, Lorna who really knocked it outta the graveyard with her creativity. She decorated black condiment cups to make the cutest treat holders. This skeleton popping his skull off with the tag "Oops! There Goes My Head" is the best!
This second condiment cup filled with candy was decorated with a fun tombstone and adorable paper pieced Tokidoki spooky love couple, Adios and Ciao Ciao.
I received my very first Halloween card ever this year. My crafty friend, Bev knows how much I love interactive cards so she put together this fun card to send to me...
Had to include a short video of this card since stills could never capture the fun action of this card!
As the card is opened, Count Dracula rises and sits up in his coffin! The original idea and template for this card comes from Awesome SVGs. If you'd like to try to recreate this card, the designer, Omar shares the free SVG template and You Tube video tutorial to make this on his website.
A special thanks to my sweet friends for generously sharing their wonderful creative talents with me for a fun Halloween!
Really wanted to try some sort of shaker treat boxes for Halloween this year so I came up with these coffin shaped boxes with a shaker lid.
The svg cut file of the template for the coffin box was a freebie from Birds Cards that I had downloaded just prior to the closing of the the site earlier this month. I edited the original cut file by adding a shaker window to the lid and creating a backing insert for the window with a depth of 1/8 inch to hold the sequins and sprinkles.
Front of the box was decorated with a spider and "Boo!" die cut from an old Cuttlebug Halloween die. Cutting files for the spider web and trick or treating Kuromi in her skeleton costume were created in Make the Cut Design Program.
I put together a dozen of these boxes to share with friends. Didn't have a chance to bake this year so instead, coffin boxes were filled with my favorite Japanese rolled cookies.
While looking for ideas for Halloween treat boxes, I came across these skull favor boxes designed by "Little Paper Racoon" on Etsy. I have been wanting to make skull shaped boxes for Halloween for a very long time, so I was very excited to purchase the template for this project.
The original template for this box was in PDF format, intended to be printed and then cut by hand. Since I preferred to have it cut on my Silhouette, I converted it into a svg cut file and made a few changes. Instead of the separate top fitting lid of the original box, I decided to edit the template by welding the lid piece to the main skull piece so it would cut as a single piece and left the flap on the top of the skull unglued as a flip style lid. Nose and eye sockets were changed to be cut instead of printed on the skull and teeth were changed to be a print and cut.
Then just for fun I added bows with spiders, skull eye patches, rhinestone catch lights in the eye sockets, and lots of Stickles glitter glue.
Back of the skull looked so bare so I added a sentiment.
Thankfully these skull boxes were pretty quick to assemble once they were cut so I was able to get a dozen done in time for fright night.
Frank and Polah are getting dressed up to attend the Monster Mash tonight! Have a safe and fun Halloween!
