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!