Pokemon GO! {We Choose YOU!}

When I  discovered that my son in law enjoys playing the Pokemon Go! game, my immediate reaction was, "Yaas! He's getting a Pokemon card for his birthday!" Wanted it to be an interactive card so I decided to do another Spinner Square Pop Up card using Karen Burniston's die.

As the card is opened, the panel that shows through the window on the front of the card pops forward, and a "spinning" arm makes Pikachu, together with a Pokeball and the sentiment appear from behind it. Very cool!

For the Pokemon, I chose to put together paper piecings of Squirtle, Charmander, and of course Pikachu using SVG cutting files purchased on Etsy.

Then, inspired by a free printable Pikachu Valentine card designed and shared by Paula Biggs, I created a similarly styled Pikachu gift card holder to go with the Pokemon card. Always kind of fun when I can get everything to tie in to the same theme.

Panda Hugs and Unicorn Sparkles

Happy Happy Valentine's Day! Made ten of these simple panda boxes and filled them with freshly baked Lemon Chip cookies for my "Galentines" this year.

The kawaii panda is a clipart image from the Cute Pandas Vector Clip Art set created by "Look Look Pretty Paper" on Etsy.  Make the Cut design program was used to render him into a paper piecing cutting file to fit onto the front of my cooky box.

The cooky box design was inspired by the boxes that the new Diamond Head Bakery shortbread cookies come packaged in. Their shortbread is yummy, but even better, I thought their hinged lid boxes were very cool and wanted to do something similar for my cooky box. I tried to create a template in Make the Cut by welding together basic shapes (square, triangles), but ended up having to simplify the fancy folded hinged lid.

I also designed my boxes to be a smidge larger so I could get a dozen cookies to fit inside. Glued panda's body to the base of the box and attached his head to the hinged lid with some foam tape.

As a final touch, I added a Valentine sentiment and a few glittery hearts to the back and tied a ribbon around the box.

Made only one Valentine card this year...a Unicorn themed Valentine for our dear granddaughter. I'm starting to think that I now like Unicorns just as much (or maybe even more) as pandas! Lol, we've already bought our granddaughter a Unicorn rocking horse, Unicorn blankets, Unicorn hoodies, Unicorn t shirts, Unicorn plushies ... I'm guessing it won't be long before her momma says "ENOUGH!"

But these cutie patootie paper pieced Unicorns were just too hard to resist! They are from the "Chibi Unicorns" set of cutting files from SVG Cutting Files. I decided to put them on a "Wiper Card".

Have you noticed the revival of the old "Wiper Card" style with a fresh new look on stamp and cardmaking sites recently? The new revised wiper cards now have a shorter front panel so that stamped or paper pieced images can pop out from behind them. For this card, pulling on the right and left sides of the card "opens" it,  and a third Unicorn "leaps" out from behind the clouds!
I purchased the template cutting file for the "Wiper Card" from the Lori Whitlock Shop and embellished it with a rainbow, clouds and Unicorns. I also attached a piece of clear acetate to the wiper mechanism for the center unicorn so she would appear to be leaping out of the clouds.

Lots of room on the backside of the card to add a sweet sentiment. Hope our granddaughter enjoys this interactive card as much as I had fun learning to put it together. Lots of fun possibilities come to mind for this card, and I'm looking forward to playing around with this !

Happy New Year of the Boar

Please pardon me as I struggle to catch up on my New Year blog posts! I'll be sharing my New Years projects from January in this post so I can get back on schedule and hopefully share my Valentines Day projects later this week.

These are the Year of the Boar refrigerator magnet calendars I put together for sharing with family and friends this year.

I also made several of these New Year cards with a fan window cut out. A strip of washi paper was adhered to the inside of the card so it would peek thru the window.

Inside, I added a  kawaii paper pieced boar above the strip of washi paper. I was all set to mail out several of these cards together with calendars until I went to the post office and found out it was going to cost me $3.55 to mail each set! I bit the bullet and mailed about half of them, and then while I debated about  mailing the rest, a few days later the postage rates went up! Are you kidding me?!!!(Sorry, I just HAD to VENT!)

And finally, I put together these Year of the Boar tags for a little over a  dozen take out boxes filled with Chex Mix to pass out to family at our New Years Day family reunion.

"Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!" 

Celebrating the Lunar Year of the Pig

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year! Celebrating the start of a New Year and my return  after quite a lengthy hiatus from blogland.

It's the Year of the Pig, according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar so I put together a dozen of these red pleated bags with a back flap closure and filled them with a dozen freshly baked almond cookies. Kept the decorating simple with just some metallic gold tafffeta ribbon threaded behind a Year of the Pig emblem.

The pig cut out was created by starting with a silhouette image of a pig, then adding the the Chinese character for pig and the flower flourish. I used shimmery Jupiter Stardream text weight paper for the pig, backed with gold foil cardstock. The round emblem behind the pig is a stylized icon for the Chinese character "Fu" for "prosperity". I cut this using Gold Stardream cardstock and backed it with red glitter cardstock and a final layer of gold foil cardstock. The emblems were 3 inches in diameter and the finished bags were 9 x 5 inches with a depth of 2.5 inches.

Here's the Chinese New Year card I made to send to our granddaughter. The kawaii paper pieced lantern on the left is a cutting file from SVG Cutting Files, and the one on the right was created by tracing a lantern silhouette icon in Make the Cut Design program. Bazzill Bling, gold foil, and gold Stardream cardstocks were used to cut and paper piece the lanterns and I used red glitter cardstock for the background.

And here's the fun piggy pop up inside the card. I used the same basic pattern from Lori Whitlock's Pop Up Cat card for the body, only changing kitty's paws into "hooves" and replacing kitty's head and tail with a  cute piggy head and tail traced into a cutting file from a coloring book image. The panel behind piggy was run thru Spellbinder's Asian M-Bossabilities folder for texture.

Then, inspired by some adorable piggy lai see red envelopes I spied on Ali Express, I decided to try and see if  I could come up with something similar.

I used the same piggy head I had originally created for the pop up card and used washi papers for piggy's dress. I used the Print and Cut function to make the coin, layering gold text weight paper and foil cardstock. A freebie cutting file created by Bird's Cards found here was used for piggy's folded bow.

Lifting piggy's head opens the flap of the the lai see envelope!
Everything was kind of rushed and last minute, but I had fun putting together these few things for Chinese New Years this year.

And here's our furbaby, Latte (she's the one on the right!) joining me to wish everyone much happiness, good health and good luck in the New Year of the Pig!