Happy New Year of the Ox

Happy New Year! According to the Chinese lunar calendar, this year, 2009, is the Year of the Ox. The actual first day of the Chinese New Year is January 26th, but I wanted to try and get a jump start since most of us celebrate the New Year on the 1st.

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Pulled out these paint cans left over from couple Christmases back and started having some fun decorating them. Created my ox simply by using the cow from the Animal Kingdom cartridge and by adding a pair of horns and a ring for his nose using the crescent & circle shapes from the George cartridge. Font cartridges for "Year of the Ox" and "2009" are George and Stone Script. The kanji symbol on the back of the can is the Chinese character for "cow", which was created in Design Studio by welding shapes from George. I used red cardstock and Japanese washi paper to do a 1" border all around the can on the top and bottom. For the lid, I used my Lion circle cutter to cut a circle from red cardstock to fit, edged it with a Krylon gold leafing pen and added the "Happy New Year" sentiment cut from Currency Gold cardstock using my new Wildcard cartridge. Finished it off with red and gold nylon ribbons knotted to the handle and added a small gift card. The cute stamp on the gift card is from Mari and Me, colored in with Copic and Berol Prismacolor pens. Really enjoyed making these for family and friends, but I only had 8 cans. Still want to make more, so I guess I'll have to check out Ben Franklin this weekend with my 40% off coupons to see if I can pick up a few more cans.