Christmas Card and Gift Tags

The inspiration for our family holiday card this year came from this four sided Christmas card we received from a dear friend several years ago. I loved the simple elegance of her card and knew I would one day try to do something similar. When I saw Dreaming Tree's Holly Christmas card this year, I immediately knew I wanted to use it to do a four sided card.

What I didn't realize at that time is that the beautiful and intricate filigree cutfile would take way too long to cut. I ended up having to simplify the design drastically, and even then it took my poor Silhouette machine over 30 minutes to cut just 2 panels. I also found I had to allow the machine to rest between cuts or it would overheat and stall in the middle of a cut. That's when I decided to change our card into a three sided one instead.
Despite all the trauma associated with the cutting process, I was pretty happy with the final result. I used gold foil board on the base of the card to add our sentiment and added gold foil holly leaves and red glitter berries for accents.

I put together these penguin gift tags to gift our holiday chex mix to friends and family this year. The adorable penguin svg cutting file comes from Marjorie Ann Designs' Snowball Fight Penguins set.

Also did several of these quickie Peeking Santa Bear tags using a die by the same name from Cottage Cutz Designs.

More Christmas Gift Card Holders

Our trusty mail carrier got this fun  cardstock version of a postal mail drop box from us this year for Christmas.

The front opens up and inside is a letter for her with a gift card inside.

Then for my daughter who wanted a Lulu Lemon gift card, I made a miniature Lulu Lemon look a like bag by creating a digital image of the design on the actual bag and using it to fill, print and cut using Make the Cut Design program. Giving giftcards can be fun for the giver and the recipient when you can think up some innovative ways to present them.

Slippahs for Christmas

I guess most everywhere else these are called "Flip Flops", but here in the islands most of us grew up calling them "Rubbah Slippahs". Anyway, I thought it would be kind of fun to use these paper "Flip Flops" as gift card holders this Christmas. Thanks to Pinterest, I was able to track down a freebie cutting file for these at Paper Dolls blog, here. 

The freebie cutting file is for a taller,  more feminine, wedge style or deeper box (about 2 inches in height) but since I also wanted to make these for guys, I altered the cutting file by decreasing the height of the box to approximately 1 inch for the guys. For the design on the flip flops, I found a file for digital paper that looked almost like a tapa print and used it to do a fill, print and cut on my Silhouette.

        I cut inserts to fit inside each box with tabs cut to hold the gift cards in place.

Just for fun I ran the bottom panel or sole of flip flops through Couture Creations Candy Stripe embossing folder to add some some texture.

For the ladies, I kept the 2 inch height to the flip flops. I used a digital hibiscus border design to use as a fill pattern and did a print and cut for the tops. Since these boxes were deeper, I added paper shreds so the insole inserts with the gift cards would sit higher in the box.

The outsoles were run through an embossing folder with a tiny flower pattern for texture. I made seven pairs of these for Christmas gifts, and  also made boxes just the right size for each pair of flip flops to fit in. These were so much fun to make and give because they really looked so much like the real thing.

Hidden Message Thank You Card

The day before we left on our trip I was all packed and had some extra time so I decided I would try and make a thank you card for our dog sitter who would be caring for our furbaby while we were away. It's been awhile since I made a Hidden Message style card so I decided to try one again, keeping the embellishing to a bare minimum.

Paper pieced puppy holding the heart is from the "Puppy Love" cutting file from Little Scraps of Heaven Designs. I find myself using this cutting file quite often because it reminds me a lot of our own dog, Latte.

Pulling down on the pull tab at the bottom of the card reveals a "hidden message"  which appears above the doggie's head as well as one on the bottom slider piece. This fun surprise slider card is really a simple one to put together once you see how it's constructed. I used the tutorial by Beate Johns on Splitcoast Stampers found here.

Pillow Box Treat Holders

I recently made these pillow boxes to hold cookies I had baked to share with friends. I used one of the many freebie  pillow box templates you can find online and traced the template using Make the Cut to create a cutting file. Since I needed the box to be fairly large, I first cut the original template in half, and enlarged it so that each half would fit on a 12x12 inch piece of cardstock. The two halves were then glued together to create a pillow box that was about 5 inches high and 7 inches long with a depth of about 2 inches.

 

To decorate, I cut a wide belly band from printed paper to wrap around the box and added a round scallop edged tag. The pair of cute paper pieced teddies are from Cuddly Cute Designs Love You To the Moon and Back file. The boxes turned out to be a good size to hold candies, but not quite deep enough for holding many cookies.

Boo!

I had to quickly recall the Disney/Pixar movie, Monsters, Inc. when I learned that our granddaughter would be dressing as the character, "Boo" from that movie for Halloween this year. Of course, I wanted to keep in the theme for her Halloween card!

Happily I didn't have any trouble finding a svg cutting file for "Boo" on Etsy. Many to choose from, but I used the svg file from Sportrops and was very pleased that it cut cleanly and accurately.

Decided to keep it simple and decided to do an easel type card.

And guess who got selected to sew the costume! LOL, I had to dust off my sewing machine and pray that it would still work! My daughter purchased the pattern from Punkie Monkey on Etsy.

 Finding all fabrics and notions needed to make the costume took a little time, but once I got started it wasn't too bad. Being that our granddaughter lives in a different state, the hardest part was not being able to have her try it on to make sure it would fit. I think it may have been a little snug, but hopefully her momma will be able to make the needed adjustments so she can "Boo!" tonight.

Best Witches for a Happy Halloween!

It's hard to believe Halloween is just a few days away already! I really wish that I had gotten started sooner working on Halloween goodies but somehow just couldn't get myself into gear!

Just so happens it was my turn to share a project at my monthly craft club in September, and this is the Make and Take project we put together at the meeting. This was another simple Hexagonal Pop Up card, this time in a Halloween theme. Since I wanted to keep the focus on the construction of the base of the card, I tried to keep the paper piecing to a minimum by using the Print and Cut feature for the cute witch and gravestones.

Unfortunately, only a handful of ladies were able to attend the meeting so I ended up with several extra unused kits. Didn't want them to go to waste so I put them all together and added a pocket to the backside of the cards and sent them off with giftcards as a spooky surprise to a few of my ghoulfriends!

Only had time enough to make one treat bag for Halloween this year, and it was for my sister in law's furbaby. I came across this super cute Pochacco and friend skeleton image and just couldn't resist the challenge of creating a cutting file!

Speaking of furbabies, here's our own little Latte all dressed up  in her Polar Bear costume, ready to go trick or treating!

FORE! Hubby's Birthday

Hubby was pleased as punch to get yet another golf themed card from me for his birthday. It's always a challenge trying to come up with different golf themed cards for him... thank goodness for talented crafters who generously share their ideas and Pinterest so I can save and remember them! 
The inspiration for hubby's birthday card this year comes from the Stamp Owl herself, Frances Byrne. I came across her wonderful golf themed card on her blog, StampOwl's Studio while I was learning how to use Karen Burniston's Spinning Square Pop Up die.

For my card, I put together a paper pieced golfing bear by using the standing teddy from Marjorie Ann Designs' Cool Treats file. After having the Silhouette cut out the pieces, I glued the bear's arms, legs and body positioned so it might look like he was swinging a golf club instead of holding an icecream as in the original file. Golf club cut file was created from a coloring book image. I kept the background simple by using Lawn Fawn's stitched hillside borders die.

The funnest part of this interactive card is how the panel with golf bear pops forward and an arm with the sentiment and golf ball peeks out from behind as the card is opened. I'm really liking Karen Burniston's Spinner Square Pop Up die a lot . A little tricky to put together, but well worth the resulting fun card. Highly probable that this will soon become my new "go to" card style for birthday cards this year!

Baby Girl Building Blocks Card

This is a card I put together for a grandbaby of a very sweet friend who recently became a proud and happy Gramma. I guess I am now in the stage of life where all my friends are joining me in retirement and becoming grandparents too!

It's been awhile since I've made a Building Blocks card, so I decided it was time to try one again. 

This is the first Building Blocks card I've done for a baby girl, and also my first time stretching it to a six block card so baby's name, "Kalena" would fit. I had to keep the blocks to 1 inch in height to avoid ending up with a card that would seem way too huge. I used  Make the Cut Design Program and Memo true type font to create the cutting file for the alphas on the blocks

3 panels on this card to decorate! I created cutting files for the giraffe family on the front using safari animal clipart from My Cute Lobster on Etsy and Doodlebug in the Lori Whitlock Store.

On the inside of the card, paper pieced teddy also from Lori Whitlock Store, ducky is from an old Quickutz die, and onsie and bottle are from Cricut Baby Steps cartridge.
The Building Blocks card makes fun baby cards; I especially like that I can add baby's name to the blocks to personalize these cards and make them extra special. I used the tutotrial and video tutorial found over at Splitcoast Stampers, here.

Let the Relaxation Begin!

Here's a fun retirement card I put together for a special lady who I used to work with. Although I myself am recently retired, I haven't had the opportunity to make many retirement cards yet so I needed to create a board on my Pinterest account to start saving ideas right away! The inspiration for this card came from a super cute and clever punch art retirement card that was created by Rochelle Peterson and posted on her blog, Creative Corner Studio.

To make this into a fun pop up card, I used the pop up mechanism from Karen Burniston's Katherine Label Pop Up Die so the teddy bear on the float rises and pops up as the card is opened.

The adorable bikini clad teddy and the float are paper piecing cut files from Marjorie Ann Designs: "Girls Just Wanna Have Sun" for the ring float, and "Beach Day Fun" for the teddy. The fancy labels  I used for the sentiments are freebie svg cutting files from Images by Heather M blog.
Kudos once again to Karen Burniston for coming up with this easy and fool-proof pop up mechanism die so everyone can create fun, "wowza" pop up cards everytime!