Hina Matsuri (Girls Day) Goodies

Happy Girls Day! Today, March 3rd, we celebrate Girls Day, also known in Japan as "Hina Matsuri" (Princess Doll Festival) or "Momo No Sekku" (Peach Festival). Although Girls Day is not a big celebration here, I have many fond childhood memories of my parents putting up the beautiful tiered display of hina ningo brought back from Japan by my grandmother to celebrate. I recall it was quite an ordeal; it took them several hours to assemble the tiers and make certain that all the dolls were arranged in their correct position on the tiers. I remember getting so excited watching the whole assembly process and being so happy when it was done...LOL...even though I was absolutely FORBIDDEN to touch or play with any of the dolls! To this day, memories of this traditional holiday continue to warm my heart and I have even begun a small collection of miniature girls day dolls.

To celebrate Girls Day this year, I put together a dozen of these small gift boxes filled with chocolate filled manju cookies and green tea cream wafers for passing out to friends and family. I fell in love with this adorable stamp image of Misaki chasing sparrows recently released from Sister Stamps and knew it would be perfect to decorate the boxes. I used Copics to color and paper pieced her kimono with digital washi paper. Cut out images were adhered with foam tape to pretty printed cardstock from Best Creations Kimono line. Then added Gold Smooch to the obi and a bit of glitter to the kimono with a Gelly Roll Stardust pen  for a subtle bling.

Printed paper from My Little Shoebox and red cardstock embossed with the plum blossom folder from Cuttlebug were used to decorate the box cover panels.

Here's how the box opens up...

This is my adaptation of the "Origami Fold Box" which I first saw posted on the Scor-Pal website. The original box by Vicki Hook is about 3 inches square, but since I needed a flatter, but slightly wider box, I tweaked the measurements of her template a bit to get this. My box ended up being 4 x 4 with a depth of 1.25 inches. I also added a 1/2 inch overlap on the gatefold cover. Will probably post the template for this later...

Of course our furbaby Latte and her "girlfriends" got treats too...

Thought these would be perfect as a Girls Day surprise treat for her doggie girlfriends! Can you imagine?!!! Salmon Sushi for doggies!

These are the bags I decorated to put the dog sushi in...

Cute little paper pieced dog is a svg cutfile called "Puppy Love" purchased online from the Too Cute By Jessica site. Sakura border and tag were created by welding the sakura file from the Cricut Pagoda cartridge together in Design Studio.

And finally, here's a photo I dug up from the archives that I wanted to share...

This is a photo of my daughter (now married) posing in front of the Girls Day doll set that was brought back from Japan by my grandmother nearly 60 years ago. We haven't taken the set out to display for many years now, but I'm hoping that it will still be in good condition to pass down when she too has her first daughter.

Hope you crafty ladies had a wonderful Girls Day! After all, you know, all of us who still like to play with paper, scissors and glue...we're all still little girls at heart, right?