Monday, February 8, 2016

Swinging In with the Year of the Monkey


Happy Chinese New Year! Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Monkey so I made batches of Oriental Crispex snacks and put them in the same take out boxes I we used for giving our Chex mix during Christmas.

This time I tagged the boxes with a Year of the Monkey tag. I used the "Gone Bananas" cutting file from Marjorie Ann Designs for my monkey and welded together cherry blossoms from Cricut "Pagoda" cartridge to create the border. The numbers for "2016" is Arial font rendered into a cutting file with Make the Cut (MTC) program. Tag was cut using a metal die from Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Circle Tag" set. I really like that it doesn't take much to make these take out boxes to look festive enough for holiday giving...just some ribbon and a cute tag!

Also made a bunch of these refrigerator magnet calendars to go along with the treats. Actually, this is the project I had originally created for our annual Cricut Club share project. Made 30 of these calendars for our Cricut Club project, another dozen donated to mom's Senior Citizen Club craft fair, and 30 more for giving to friends and family at New Years.

I used a combination of Arial and Bergamo fonts to do the "2016", using MTC to create a cut file and shadows for it. The red base background layer was created by welding a shadow of the "2016" to a rectangle shape. Adorable little hanging monkey is from the Cricut "Life's A Party" cartridge. Found a traceable image of the kanji character "saru" or "monkey" on the web and had MTC create a cut file for that as well. Added that to a small circle as a medallion for the monkey to hold.
Then for a bit of whimsy, I attached the monkey to the calendar using a small brad. allowing him to swing from side to side. Fun!
Speaking of fun...

...couldn't go without sharing these two AMAZING New Years goodies from my super wonderful and talented crafty friends, Kris and Lorna!

No question about it, Lorna once again got squeals of delight from all of us when she brought these fabulous daruma treat holders to our workplace. I thought the colors and details on her Daruma doll face and body were really well done! I love how she added the kanji character for "kotobuki" which is the symbol for "celebration, long life, happiness" to her daruma and the branch of glittery sakura blossoms. Hard to see in the photos but even the holder itself has been embossed with an Asian wave pattern. Inside, a yummilicious rice cracker!

And how about this super ADORABLE pillow box holder filled with sweet treats shared by Kris at our last Cricut Club meeting?  Kris' little monkey is a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables....isn't he the cutest thing ever? Love how she embossed the red belly band with the weave embossing folder from Cuttlebug's Asian bundle for a perfect festive touch!

Okay! Looks like even our little Latte is dressed and ready to celebrate the start of a brand New Year! Gung Hay Fat Choy! Best wishes and congratulations to all for a wonderful prosperous New Year!

2 comments:

Jadams said...

Happy New Year, Eunice!

Have A Scrap Happy Day said...

Holy cow Eunice, you've been dang busy cranking out all of those magnetic calendars. You made a "ton" of them. Wowser!!!! You always come up with such brilliant ideas and so well coordinated. The tags for the take-out boxes are just TOO CUTE. I must say, "You are quite a baker too." Thanks for sharing your sweetness. Your friends are super creative too. I'm in awe! Hee-hee, Latte is so adorable in the dragon outfit. How cute is that?