Holiday Treasures

Hope everyone is recovering from Christmas and raring to go for the upcoming New Year! For my last post of the year, I want to share some of the amazing papercrafted Christmas treasures I received from my super talented friends this year...

As always, my dear friend, Patti of Creations By Patti blog from the San Francisco wowed me with her creative prowess!

Patti's Christmas card is so elegant and beautifully intricate, with glittering ornaments hanging from a bough of paper punched sprigs. Love, love LOVE the embossed background with the flurry of delicate silvery snowflakes!

And how about this cute little gingerbread house box Patti put together as a super SWEET TREAT! Look inside to find yummy Reeses chocolate peanut butter cups, all dressed up with colorful stamped stickers. And as always, so intricately, beautifully done!

Another holiday surprise, these from sweet Karen of Have A Scrappy Day blog on the Big Isle....
I was so excited to receive this little panda coaster calendar! Had to put it on my 'frig right away to show it off  to all who came over to party with us for Christmas....and of course everyone adored it! And how cute is Karen's stamped, colored, embossed, and paper pieced Christmas card! So pretty and SWEET...just like Karen!

 Check out these beautiful white poinsettias she paper pieced to embellish her card...the white on white is absolutely stunning!

And these very special handcrafted gift tags created by Gwen (snowman) and Kris (bear) will be treasured for many years to come. It's clear to see all the time and love that these ladies put into creating these wonderful keepsakes!

A fabulously unique holiday greeting came from one of my oldest and dearest friends, Bev. We  look forward to getting her cards each Christmas because she never fails to come up with something new and exciting every year. Woo Hoo!....looks like I might have to CASE this one for our cards next year!

This last holiday gift is not a papercraft, but a special gift handcrafted with love by my mom, who loves to create magic with plastic canvas. She brought this over when she came for dinner on Christmas Eve, and it was the perfect added  festive touch for our holiday dinner table!
Thank you so much to all of you who stopped in to visit throughout the year. And extra special thanks to those of you who always take time to leave such sweet comments...it really means a lot to me! Enjoy the rest of 2013 and see ya soon in 2014!

Sweet Treats for "Deer" Friends

Happy Holidays! Whew! It's 2:45 am Christmas Eve, and I'm finally finished with wrapping the gifts and cleaning the house in time for our family get together tonight at our place. Now I have a bit of time to quickly post my Christmas projects...none of which would ever have gotten done in time without the help of sweet hubby. Not only did he help with the scoring, addressing and stamping of our Christmas cards, he also picked up the jars and helped me make the batches of sweet Chex mix that went inside. I had fun decorating the jars to make them look festive...

The little peeking reindeer is a cutting file I picked up from Treasure Box Designs. The original file was a lot cuter, with colorful little Christmas bulbs wrapped around the reindeer's antlers but with 25 of these to do, I really had to try and keep it simple. Pretty holly paper is a bargain find I picked up last at Hobby Lobby last year...at 25 cents per 12x12 sheet I couldn't resist getting several...and now I'm glad I did! Label was created in Printshop using CAC Shishoni Brush, Pharmacy, Arial, and LD Charming fonts, and cut into ovals with Spellbinders Nesting Oval and Scallop oval dies using my brand new Sizzix Magnetic Platform to center them...what a marvelous invention!

 Had to keep our Christmas cards very simple this year since I got started working on them so late. I decided to do a Joy fold style with a photo of our little Latte holding a wreath I made. It's actually one of those rope chew things from Petco onto which I hot glued holly leaves and berries I cut from felt. LOL, I bought several of those rope type toys this year and we've been training Latte to "HOLD IT!" all year long, just so I could get her to pose for this photo for our Christmas card this year!

I tried to keep the embellishments simple, using only a simple Cottage Cutz mini holly die. The green panel on the left was embossed using a Sizzix holly embossing folder and  the patterned paper is from Frances Meyer.

 On the inside, I used a Spellbinders Labels Two die to cut out the sentiment and added a photo from our trip to Japan earlier this year. Kept the inside panel to the right blank so I'd have a place write a short note.

Okay...I need to take a short nap now so I can get up again in a few hours and start cooking! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thankful!

Thanksgiving is several weeks past already, but as you can tell, I'm a little behind on my posts...as a matter of fact, I guess I'm a little behind on just about everything right now. Thanksgiving happened to fall on my birthday this year, which was nice because I got to celebrate with family and a yummy Thanksgiving dinner. My dear friend Kris also came by to wish me a happy birthday and dropped off a very special gift and this most amazing birthday card...

Here's the front of the card...beautifully and intricately paper pieced...

Isn't this little monkey pirate and his treasure chest the cutest ever?

Ready for the best part? Slowly open the card....

...to see the monkey pirate slide across the plank to fight off the enemy! Too CUTE!!!! Totally, TOTALLY LOVE these interactive action type cards...

Wow! Imagine all the time Kris must have spent cutting and piecing together all these adorable little monkeys. These cuties are from  the "Pirate's Life For Me" cutting file from Scrapping Bug Designs. Gotta say that this amazing card certainly brightened my day and made me feel extra special on my birthday....thank you so much, Kris!

 

Also want to share yet another surprise RAK from my sweet friend, Lorna. How CUTE is this?!! Who'd have ever thought to use a ship shaped box for a clever little Thanksgiving treat holder? Yes, this lady's creative genius is unstoppable! Treat box is filled with pretty blue foiled kisses and if you look closely, you'll see that the mast holding the sails is a See's lollipop turned upside down...super COOL! Thank you, Lorna!

 

The last of my Thanksgiving/birthday surprises came from hubby...this one is becoming a beloved tradition with us. Every year for the past few years, "Latte" comes to "visit" and wish me a happy birthday at my workplace...

Here's a shot of "Latte" and Latte....will the REAL Latte please stand up!....LOL!!!

 



Birthday Wishes for Some "Bunny" Special

Got another "box type" of card to share with you today. This one is actually very different than the sliding box cards I've recently been hooked on. For one thing, windows on this card are on the panels rather than the corners of the box. The second difference is that there's no sliding mechanism. The pop up mechanism I used on the inside of the box which anchors the cut out images is the same as is used on most simple pop up cards. A little time consuming to put together since there are four windows to fill and embellish, but worth the extra time for someone very special, right?
Here's a look at each of the four panels...

I used MTC to create each of the box panels with the oval  cut out window; and the cute baking bunny images are from Kristi W. Designs which I purchased a while ago as a svg cutting file set called "Bunnies Making Cupcakes" from Kadoodle Bug Designs.  Hmmm---must have been quite awhile ago because it seems to have since retired and is no longer available on the Kadoodle Bug site. Daisies are from an old Quickutz die and label is another Pinterest digi find rendered into a cutfile with MTC. Sorry, the photos aren't very good because of the poor lighting and shadows created from inside the box, but if you click on the photos you should be able to get a better look at those adorable baking bunnies.

Here's a birds eye view of the card from the top which shows the strips of cardstock inside, glued together to form rectangular "boxes" which served as the base for mounting the bunnies. I first saw a card similar to this created and shared by Monica Soto on the Scrappy Dew website. I totally fell in love with Monica's card (she calls hers a "Go Round Card") but never could figure out how it was made. Saw this type of card again much later on over at the Instant Cardmaking Downloads site, this time called a "Spring Box Card" and with a free photo tutorial by Beryl's Crafty Creations.  Although I started out constructing my card according to Beryl's tutorial, I ended up having to change it up a bit since the base was unable to support the heavier weight of the paper pieced bunnies. However if you plan on using stamped images in your box, the spring type base in Beryl's tutorial should work just fine.

And here's the final "folded flat" photo. This one is pretty fat so I ended up making a box for it instead of an envelope. A lot of trial and error (mostly errors!) went into putting this card together, but I liked how it turned out and am looking forward to trying another one soon...and hopefully I'll eventually figure out how to do this more quickly...



Still the Only One for Me!

Hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend spent with friends and family! Wow, can you believe it's December already?!!
Every year about ths time I find myself scrambling to keep up with the holidays ahead. In addition to Halloween and celebrating five family birthdays during the months of October and November, hubby and I also have our wedding anniversary in October.
For my anniversary card to hubby this year, I wanted to use a cute "rhymie-stymie" sentiment I came across on Pinterest..." Of all the fish in the sea... You're still the only one for me!" Thought a pleated center type card would be perfect for my fish themed anniversary greeting.

 

Here's the card opened, with my blue (hubby) and pink (me)  fishies swimming in the center of a heart shaped wreath of  seaweed!

I used the Create A Critter Cricut cartridge to cut all the fish and sea creatures, and Life's A Beach cartridge for the seaweed and coral. Heart shaped seaweed wreath was created in MTC.

Taking a closer look here shows the pleated center of the card where I glued  in strips of clear acetate (to suspend the fish and hearts), and stalks of seaweed in random pleats to add dimension.

Always have fun using this pleated center type card with strips of clear acetate whenever I want to create the illusion of objects floating or swimming...you can find a detailed and easy to follow photo tutorial for this shared by super talented Carol on her blog, Extreme Cards and Papercrafting.

I received a surprise delivery of a dozen beautiful long stemmed roses at my workplace from hubby on our anniversary (he's such a sweetie!)...and all he got from me was this card...and all my love, of course!



"B-A-B-Y" Blocks Cards

These baby blocks cards were put together a few months ago for two of our friends who had new additions to their families. These were surprisingly very simple to make and only takes half a sheet of 12 x 12 cardstock. The easy to follow video instructional by papercrafter45 for this card can be found here on YouTube.

The fun part....decorating each of the blocks takes a little longer, depending on how fancy you want to get. I decided to keep mine simple with paper piecings of baby toys. Rubber ducky was cut from a Quickutz die, and the others are from Cricut cartridges. Ball is from Create A Critter, and diaper pin and rattle are from the New Arrival cartridge.

 

The alphabet cuts on the blocks were created in Make the Cut (MTC) using Times New Roman font. I used them to spell "BABY" on the front of the card and the names of the two babies on the back. Fluffy Bear and Bunny are two of my most favorite cutfiles purchased over at My Scrap Chick.

 

 Just love that these cards actually fold flat so I could add my sentiment to the bottom and easily slip them into their envies.  Had fun with these cards and I wish I could come up with other ways of using this block type card other than just as a baby card...any ideas?

 

One In A Minion!

Shopping for gifts for my son in law is easy because he maintains a wish list at Amazon.com. When I checked his wish list a few weeks before his birthday this year, I saw that he had recently added a pre-order for the "Despicable Me 2" DVD slated to be released in December. And so of course it was a no brainer that I had to do a Minion birthday card for him to go with his gift.
Happily, super talented Shirley aka Okieladybug created and shares her cutfiles of a trio of Minions on her blog, Okieladybug's Scrap 'N More. As always her cutfiles are wonderfully detailed and cut nice and clean...thank you, Okie!
I used one of the Minions for the front of my card together with a birthday cake cut using CottageCutz' Celebration Cake die, and a gift of bananas (a Minion favorite food) cut from Cricut Create A Critter cart.

Then on the inside, for some birthday fun and silliness, I used the Sizzix Spinning Platform die for a surprise Minion pop up.

And for an extra dose of silliness, I mounted the Minion onto an Action Wobbler before gluing him to the spinning platform...when the card is opened, the Minion pops up and wobbles...fun!

Here's the card completely open ...don't you just love the corny sentiment?

Since the "Despicable Me 2" DVD is a pre-order and won't be available till next month, I had no gift to send to my son in law with his birthday card. So instead, I made a little "gift card" to let him know what his birthday gift was together with some Gru funny money...all created in Printshop.

Had a ton of fun putting this together...though I have yet to see even the first "Despicable Me" movie, I watched several trailers and clips from both movies and learned a lot of cute things about these Minions...now I really hope to see this movie soon! Till next week...."Poopaye"! (Goodbye in Minion)

Wishing You A PAR-fect Birthday!

While searching the internet for golf themed images recently, I was happy to come across a few of good ol' Snoopy that I thought would work perfectly on a card for hubby's birthday. After using MTC to create a cut file for my golfing Snoopy,  I thought it might be fun to use him on an open front sliding box style card.

A tall panel was added to the back of the box to create a golf course background scene with the green, some trees and clouds. Snoopy and the tee were attached to the sliding element in the center.  I used a 3/8 inch circle punch for the golf ball and adhered it to a strip of clear acetate, which was glued to the inside of the card, hoping to create the look of it taking flight as Snoopy struck it with his club...fun!

Lastly, I added my sentiment to some labels and attached them to the front panels of the box.

Here's a view from the top that shows where each of the elements were attached inside the box.

And here it is folded flat, ready to slip into an envelope. LOL, as it turns out, this card worked out as a perfect match for the set of golf irons I just found out I was buying hubby for his birthday!

 

More Scary Treats!

Though I didn't go trick or treating this year I still scored some fabulous Halloween treats from my generous and uber talented friends! Just had to share!

This beautifully detailed Frankie cookie topper was created by Cricuteer pal Jean. Frankie's head is a Stampin' Up top note die, and Jean used different sized circle punches for the eyes and nose. Love how all the chalking really brings this guy to life!

Spooky girly skull box was Lorna's Halloween treat this year. Skull image is a cut from the Cricut Rock Princess cartridge which she created into a treat holder by adding side gussets. And ooooh.... look at the scary skeleton cookies that were hiding inside....too darned cute to eat!

This adorable mini coffin box with vampire bear treat holder was  created and shared by my sweet friend Kris. She used a svg cutfile template from Scrapping Bug Designs to create this. The most amazing thing about this treat box is that it's no more than 3-1/2 inches tall by 2-1/2 inches wide....wow! How did she do that?!!!!! LOL, I believe the photograph you see here is LARGER than actual size!

Oopsie...I forgot to include this last treat box created by our dear friend Heather in the group photo at the top. That's because it was hiding in the kitchen where hubby and I were devouring the last of the delicious decadent brownies that were once inside! Heather used a Chinese takeout box adorned with a cute and not so spooky spider cut from the Cricut Doodlecharms cartridge. Love those googly eyes!

And this is the reason I always have so much fun at Halloween! I am truly fortunate to have such generous and creative friends....thank you so much!!!!