Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! Today celebrates the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Rat. Sharing the cookie boxes, card, and lai see (red envelopes) I made for the New Year.

For my cookie boxes, I used a cut file from the Lori Whitlock store to put together a dozen of these gable boxes. Since I needed the boxes to be large enough to hold a dozen cookies, I enlarged the template to create a box that was 7-1/2" x 5", with a depth of 2-1/4".

To embellish the box, I used a Chinese paper cut image of a rat and the Chinese character for rat,  rendered into a cutting files using Make the Cut design program. Both were cut from gold foil and red and gold Stardream papers. Spellbinders Chinese Traditional Fence die from the Destination China Collection was used to cut gold glitter cardstock for the Chinese design behind the rat medallion.

Baked up 3 batches of almond cookies this year to fill a dozen boxes to share with friends and family.

Ever since our granddaughter was born, I've been trying to make a tradition of sending her a handmade Chinese New Year card each year in hopes that it might help her learn and appreciate some of her personal heritage.

I used gold foil and glitter cardstocks with the Chinese Traditional Fence and Chinese Coin Window dies from Spellbinders for the front of this card.  A cut file was created for the Chinese character, "fu" for good fortune, cut from gold foil and placed in the coin window. I backed the coin with red foil and placed it onto a red glitter background. Cut file for the cut corner label comes from the Lori Whitlock store and I used CK Calligraphy font.

Inspired once again by the amazing Anita Chang, I made this into a fun interactive double slider card. Pull the tab on the right side of the card...

... and a little white rat slides out from behind the panel!

Cute little rat was cut using Cricut Create A Critter cartridge. Her outfit was handcut from text weight Stardream and her bows and mandarin buttons were cut using embellishment files from SVG Cutting Files Warrior Princess.

I enlarged the corner cut label file I had used on the front of the card to create a panel for the inside to add our New Years sentiment. 

The last thing I did was to make a few Year of the Rat red envelopes for our granddaughter and a few friends. 

Inspired once again by the kawaii Year of the Rat nengajo images found on many Japanese websites, I made a cut file for my rat by welding basic shapes together in Make the Cut design program. I used the same "good fortune" character I had created earlier for the New Year card for the Rat's medallion.

I really enjoyed putting all these Year of the Rat goodies together, just wish I had more time to make more!

Thank you for stopping by, and best wishes to everyone for a New Year filled with good fortune and good health.

2020 New Years Cards

In celebration of the Year of the Rat, I put together a dozen of these New Years cards which also doubled as my holiday thank you cards.

Inspiration for my card comes from a Japanese website, Illust Box which offers its users lots of  freebie templates and ideas for printing "nengajo" or Japanese New Years postcards. I designed a cut file using Pharmacy true type font (for the numbers) together with a silhouette image of a Japanese ceramic mouse shaped bell from Illust Box to create a stencil-like cut out front for my card.

The text, "Year of the Rat"was printed onto plain white cardstock and I used the print and cut function in Make the Cut design program to cut out the 2020/Rat design. Below the stencil cut year, I added a strip of washi paper backed with gold foil cardstock as an accent.

I used red pearlized cardstock for the inner card and added my greeting together with another freebie printed image, also from the Illust Box website. Gosh, I barely got these in the mail last week and already Chinese New Years is less than 7 days away! See you next week...

2020 Calendar Magnets

I made refrigerator calendar magnets again this year to share with friends and family. Being that 2020 is the Year of the Rat, I searched the internet and found lots of kawaii inspiration on Japanese websites that offered freebie images to be used on New Years cards known as "nengajo".

One image with little mice running through the zeros in 2020 caught my eye, and I decided I would try a paper pieced rendition of it on my calendars.
I started by creating cut files and shadow layers for the mice, flowers, matsu (pine), and the year. Arial font was used for the year. I backed the calendars with gold foil and washi paper, then welded its shadow layer to the shadow layers of the numbers. After gluing everything in place, I added two more layers using gold stardream and gold foil cardstocks. Lots of layers! Lastly, magnet strips were adhered to the back of each calendar with adhesive foam.
Finished 4 dozen of these right before the New Year and have been passing them out to friends and family.

Scurrying In With the Year of the Rat

Happy, Happy New Year! I'm finally back after taking some time off during the holidays. We're celebrating the Year of the Rat on the lunar calendar in 2020, so these are the tags I made to dress up the boxes of snack mix I passed out to our guests at our annual New Years family reunion.

I put together my paper pieced rat by creating a cutting file for it using a coloring book image, and added a shadow layer cut from gold metallic foil board. Tag shape was die cut using Lawn Fawn's Stitched Circle Tags die from Stardream gold cardstock. I used a Spellbinders Nested Circle die for the back panel and ran it through Cuttlebug's Plum Blossom embossing folder from their Asian Bundle to add some texture. I also added the kanji character for "ko" or "child" cut on the Silhouette, which signifies the Year of the Rat as the first animal of the 12 year lunar cycle.

On the backside of the tag, I used the print and cut feature in Make the Cut design program to add our New Years greeting.

Stay tuned for more Year of the Rat projects that I'm still hurrying to get done! Chinese New Years is early this year so bear with me as I may be a little delinquent with my blog posts. Best wishes to all for a wonderful brand New Year!