Welcoming In the New Year 2017

Here are the Year of the Rooster magnetic calendars I put together this year for sharing with family and friends. In past years I've usually had at least half of my calendars done in time for donating to the Senior Citizen Craft Fair which is held in the fall, but I unfortunately I just wasn't able to get these started until after Christmas this year. Ugh! My lack of time management skills is showing again. Luckily, I was able to crank out three dozen of these just in time for New Years...whew!

Using the Make the Cut program made designing my calendars quick and easy. Arial font was used for the year and I chose a very simple design for a rooster so it wouldn't take too long to piece together. Mini calendars were purchased online from Impress Rubber Stamps. On the backside I added Darice adhesive magnet strips and backed them with foam tape for stability. Red sakura patterned paper is from the Cherry Delight collection from My Little Shoe Box.

To go with the calendars, I baked a few batches of Oriental Crispix cereal snack mix, and boxed them in take out boxes tagged with these Year of the Rooster tags. Isn't this little rooster adorable? I found him (together with many more Fluff Friends) posted here. I used Make the Cut to render him into a cutting file and used Lawn Fawn's Stitched Circle Tags die to cut a tag to put him on.

Both "Year of the Rooster" and the back sentiment on the tags were computer generated in Microsoft Word and cut into circles to fit the tags using the print and cut function on the Silhouette and Make the Cut.

Then for a very special aunt, I made another double hinged box, this time decorated with washi paper and a stamped and colored Sister Stamps image, "Pounding Mochi" to hold a gift card.

On the inside I placed a pop up insert to nicely hold the gift card in place. Video tutorial by Crafty Caroline for the double hinged box can be seen here, and the template for the gift card insert comes from the Holiday Cheer Box Collection at SVG Attic.