Fairytale Wedding

Here's my second take on a Cinderella themed wedding card. This one was made for the son of my coworker who got married in December. My first Cinderella wedding card was a shaker card, but this time, I was inspired by a beautiful shadowbox card by Thyme Graphics found here.

The basic concept of this is the same as with the ever popular pop up box cards. with the struts inside the box to hold the design elements. Adding a framed window makes this into a shadowbox.

Most of the cutting files I used were the same as I used for my first card. Cinderella with Prince Charming silhouette image comes from Cricut's Happily Ever After cartridge and the castle is a coloring book image found on the web which was converted into a cutting file via Make the Cut program. This time I also added a pumpkin carriage which was created by welding an image of a pumpkin together with an image of carriage wheels.

Added the names of the bride and groom to the front of the card and backed it with some pretty glittery paper. Pharmacy true type font was used to create the cutting file for this.

View from the top shows a peek at the struts which were adhered to the card below the window with the castle and carriage glued on to them.

I added a card to the back of the box with a side tab to keep the card closed. The background layer was run through Cuttlebug's Jamara embossing folder to add some pretty texture.

Then on the inside I added my sentiment and a side pocket to hold an envelope of gift cash. In the end I was slightly disappointed that I had not taken the time to dress up the back panel in the shadow box a bit. Maybe something as simple as running it through an embossing folder might have made it look much nicer. don't you think? Hopefully I can remember to try that for next time!

Girls Day Ningyo-gami

I apologize for being a little late with this, but just HAD to share these jaw dropping FABULOUS Girls Day treat boxes we received from our super talented friend Lorna!

Lorna made these beautiful Japanese dolls known as "ningyo gami" from paper, placing each doll in its own little "doll case". If you look closely you'll see that the doll cases are actually cellophane bags turned upside down. Yowza! How creative is that?!!!

And if you dared to even take this apart, you'd find that the base of the doll case is a box with sweet mochi candies hidden inside! Totally amazing, right?
But wait, there's more....

Here are the adorable treat holders Lorna made to share with her Bon Dance Club friends. Flip the kawaii paper pieced kokeshi doll over to find the sweet candies strapped to the backside. Once again, Lorna and her creative mojo are on fire! Don't know how she does it, but this creative gal never fails to come up with the most amazing treats and surprises. Thank you, Lorna!

About To Hatch!

The best Christmas gift hubby and I got last year was a phone call the day after Christmas from my daughter and son in law with news they were coming home for an unplanned visit in January. Last minute though it was, we decided to throw a baby shower for them, giving us just 2 weeks to put everything together. Crazy, huh. Not even enough time to send out invitations, but since a lot of the family would be coming over for our New Years Day family reunion, invites were entirely by word of mouth.

Theme of the shower was "About To Hatch". First glance at the party table and one would think this was for an Easter party. This was not my first choice for a baby shower theme. But sometimes you just gotta go with the flow... You see, when we made the announcement of the baby shower at our New Years Day party, my mom and aunties had "Year of the Rooster" in their heads, thinking it would be "cute" to have a rooster themed shower. Not even!  IMO, "Year of the Rooster" is not an appropriate theme for a baby shower, and especially not for a baby girl! I would have much preferred to do a "Princess" themed shower, but as a compromise, I came up with the "About To Hatch" theme...uh, well afterall, roosters all started out as baby chicks, right?

With not much time to plan and prepare, I had to keep everything simple. The cut file I used for the banner was the same one I had originally created 5 years ago when I made my daughter's "Just Married" wedding banner. I used Teletype font and MTC to create the alphas and hatching chick cut file comes from My Scrap Chick.

I had just enough time make simple favor bags for the guests and a diaper cake for the parents to be.

I was surprised at how quickly this diaper came together. Found a great tutorial for this by Mischele over at Bean Sprout Notes blog. Using a springform pan to hold the diapers in place to shape the layers and an empty paper towel roll to keep the layers stacked made this so easy!

Finished it off by covering the layers with receiving blankets, and adding bows and tulle roses. Sweet teddy dressed in the chick costume was a

Baby bottles filled with Hershey kisses and M & M's candies doubled as a cute table decor as well as a "Guess How Many" shower game.

And I just couldn't resist buying these adorable "chirping chicks" and egg shaped egg timers! 

Made 28 of these favor bags using a hatching chick paper piecing from My Scrap Chick's "Easter Chicks" collection.

Filled them with homemade chocolate chip cookies and added our thank you message on the inside.

Big hugs and special thanks to our dear sweet friend Heather who baked and decorated several of the cutest chickie and baby themed cookies ever! I used a few to decorate my daughter's favorite Lemon Crunch Cake, and the rest we individually sealed in cello bags to be used as game prizes. Darn! I really thought I had taken photos of the rest of the cookies...but I guess I didn't...I'm so mad at myself!

Thank you from our hearts also to our very special aunt who worked very hard making these lovely chicken and rooster themed kitchen towels for each of our guests. 

Whew! Now that it's over, I am still amazed that we were able to pull all of this off on such short notice...but it was fun and I'm so glad we did!

Fan Boxes for Girls Day

In celebration of Girls Day or Hina Matsuri I made fan shaped treat boxes to share with friends and family.

I actually started designing these boxes last year right before Girls Day but wasn't happy with how it looked, got frustrated, and left the template unfinished. Lacking fresh ideas for a Girls Day treat box again this year, I forced myself to finally finish it. I used a green cardstock (Bazzill Bling Petty Cash) for the lids and pink (Bazzill Romance) for the bottoms mostly just because I liked the color combo, and later liked it even more when I noticed how much it resembled the traditional pink and green diamond shaped mochi (Hishi mochi) associated with Girls Day.

To decorate the top of the box I used the fan cut from Cricut's Pagoda cartridge. The cute Japanese girl paper piecing is "Chibi Geisha Girl with Lantern" from SVG Cutting Files.

White and glitter Gelly Roll pens were used to add a simple design to the kimono and the lantern was run through a crimper to add some dimension. Cherry blossoms for her hair were cut using a Carl sakura punch.

Finished ten of these boxes just in time for Girls Day and  filled them with Japanese peach flavored candies. Wished I could have filled them with mochi instead but sadly the store I usually buy from didn't have them this year.

Also want to share this very cute and oh so creative lantern treat box designed by my sweet friend Lorna. Lorna created these as favors for a friend's party, but I thought they would be perfect as Girls Day treat boxes too. Definitely need to store this idea in the back of my brain to CASE later!