After having made sliceform sphere shaped lanterns for hubby's birthday and to send to our granddaughter for Halloween, I thought I would challenge myself to make them as Christmas gift card holders for family and friends.
I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the photos in this post. I didn't realize until later that the fairy lights I had used to illuminate these lanterns were a bit too bright to get photos with good contrast to clearly show the detailed cuts inside each sphere.
If you look closely inside the sphere, you should be able to see Santa in his sleigh pulled by eight reindeer flying across the sky as a bunny and squirrel look on in the foreground. The template to make this Christmas themed sliceform sphere was purchased from designer M3DArt on Etsy.
Each sphere required 15 sheets of 8.5 x 11 size cardstock and measures about 6.25 inches in diameter. I used Neenah Exact Index 110 lb cardstock to cut the layers, but after assembling a dozen of these, I now know that a lighter weight cardstock, (maybe 80 lb?) would probably have cut cleaner and been easier to assemble.
I used a freebie template from 3D Fancy to make the octagonal base, which was designed with a space to house the light source for the lantern. I used strings of fairy lights with 20 LED bulbs, but as mentioned earlier, a string with less bulbs may have been a better choice.
I hot foiled and die cut my Happy Holidays sentiment using Simon Hurley's "Joyful Christmas Collection" Glimmer Plates and attached it to a fancy label which had been die cut using a very old Spellbinders "Fancy Tags Two" die set. This was then glued to the front of the base.
Under the base, I added a panel matted with gold foil board with our sentiment and half circle cuts to hold a gift card.
The lanterns which I planned to hand deliver were wrapped in acetate bags tied with a festive gold bow.
Found a cute image of Santa in his sleigh which I thought was perfect for my hang tags. Instructions on how to light the lantern and where to find the gift card were printed inside.
Coolest thing about these spheres is how they collapse down to nearly flat, which made this gift super easy to mail to friends and family faraway.
Inspired by some cute Santa Claus gift bags I saw online, my Chex Mix carriers this Christmas featured none other than Saint Nick himself.
I liked the design of the Chex Mix carriers I made last Christmas so I decided to go with the same template again this year. Very simple to put together, these are shallow boxes made to fit the bottom of the bags of Chex Mix with tall panels glued onto the front and back. Holes were punched at the top of the panels so I could attach a bow to keep it closed.
Using Make the Cut Design Program, I created a cutting file for a paper pieced peeking Santa from a coloring book image found on Pinterest. Santa's beard was done as a Print and Cut so I could add our "Ho-Ho Holiday wishes!" sentiment.
Found a fun image of Santa on the golf course which I used to print up labels to use on smaller bags of Chex Mix for hubby to share with his golf club buddies.
Found the cutest polar bear Christmas wrapping paper at Hallmark this year and wanted to make matching gift tags.
I used Lawn Fawn's Stitched Circle Tags to cut silver foil board for the base and Spellbinders nestabilities dies to cut the circles from blue dotted cardstock. Polar bears were cut and paper pieced using Eline's Collectables Arctic Bear die set.
At the last minute I needed a few gift card holders to include with some gift baskets. These simple top fold cards with pockets inside for gift cards came together quickly. I decorated the fronts with different sized die cut snowflakes from MFT DieNamics "Let It Snowflake" die and flatback rhinestones.
This little polar bear tag was the answer to the problem I have every Christmas of figuring out which bag of presents goes to which family. After having delivered the wrong bag of gifts to a friend last year, I knew something had to be done.
I added the family names to cute a print and cut images of a Doodlebug polar bear from the Lori Whitlock Shop. Before cutting, I also added a small slit, just large enough for a paper clip to fit to the cut file.
This way, I was able to clip the polar bears to their correct bags before loading them into my car. Sitting on the edge of the bags these polar bears labeled with names are easy to see and no more worries of delivering the wrong bag to the the wrong family.
This is the card I created to send to our granddaughter together with her Thanksgiving "care package" this year.
I used Marianne Design's Squirrel die together with Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies to decorate the front of the card.
On the inside of the card, I added a pull down panel...
As the panel is pulled downwards, a little raccoon pops up from inside the pumpkin.
I used one of my favorite Karen Burniston pop up die sets, the "Parcel Pop Up" to add this surprise pop up element to my card. Click on the video to watch this fun pop up in action.
The cutting file for the pumpkin was created in Make the Cut Design program. Squirrel and Raccoon were cut and pieced together using dies from Marianne Designs. I used MFT's Grassy Edges die for the grass border, and Karen Burniston's Autumn Elements and word dies for the leaves and sentiment.
I added our sentiment to the left side of the card as a "print and cut" using a fancy label svg created in Make the Cut. Being that we live an ocean apart from our granddaughter means we aren't able to spend most holidays together but we hope she'll remember we have her in our hearts and thoughts when she receives this card.
I also quickly put together these treat holder boxes to share with friends we had lunch with earlier this month. Using a svg cutfile from Cuddly Cute Designs called "Wishbone Bear" I pieced together the Pilgrim Bear to add to the front of the boxes.
The template for the treat holder is a simple one; I just made a box that would fit the bottom of the box of Moose Munch Popcorn, making the front and side panels tall enough to join together at the top to tie together with a bow.
Every Thanksgiving, I look forward to receiving a wonderful handmade card from my dear friend Bev. This year her card was this fun Triple Cube Pop Up in beautiful autumnal colors.
Here's what the card looks like from the top...
... and a view of the back. I really love the cute printed paper and layers of matching cardstock Bev chose to create her card, how she used colorful leaves and squash to embellish the front, and especially the way she placed her sentiment inside the two front cubes to pop into view as the card was unfolded.
Thank you for stopping by today. Hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving day.
I have one last Halloween themed post for the year to share the fun goodies I received from my crafty friends.
I absolutely fell in love with this adorable friendly ghost treat box created by sweet friend, Kris! This guy is tall, standing 9 inches high from his cute lime green shoes to the tip of his fancy top hat! The hat is the lid, and look at all the candy he was filled with! Kris used the "Happy Ghost" svg cutfile from Simply Crafty SVGs for this fun box.
The next two treat holders were designed by my super talented friend, Lorna who really knocked it outta the graveyard with her creativity. She decorated black condiment cups to make the cutest treat holders. This skeleton popping his skull off with the tag "Oops! There Goes My Head" is the best!
This second condiment cup filled with candy was decorated with a fun tombstone and adorable paper pieced Tokidoki spooky love couple, Adios and Ciao Ciao.
I received my very first Halloween card ever this year. My crafty friend, Bev knows how much I love interactive cards so she put together this fun card to send to me...
Had to include a short video of this card since stills could never capture the fun action of this card!
As the card is opened, Count Dracula rises and sits up in his coffin! The original idea and template for this card comes from Awesome SVGs. If you'd like to try to recreate this card, the designer, Omar shares the free SVG template and You Tube video tutorial to make this on his website.
A special thanks to my sweet friends for generously sharing their wonderful creative talents with me for a fun Halloween!
Really wanted to try some sort of shaker treat boxes for Halloween this year so I came up with these coffin shaped boxes with a shaker lid.
The svg cut file of the template for the coffin box was a freebie from Birds Cards that I had downloaded just prior to the closing of the the site earlier this month. I edited the original cut file by adding a shaker window to the lid and creating a backing insert for the window with a depth of 1/8 inch to hold the sequins and sprinkles.
Front of the box was decorated with a spider and "Boo!" die cut from an old Cuttlebug Halloween die. Cutting files for the spider web and trick or treating Kuromi in her skeleton costume were created in Make the Cut Design Program.
I put together a dozen of these boxes to share with friends. Didn't have a chance to bake this year so instead, coffin boxes were filled with my favorite Japanese rolled cookies.
While looking for ideas for Halloween treat boxes, I came across these skull favor boxes designed by "Little Paper Racoon" on Etsy. I have been wanting to make skull shaped boxes for Halloween for a very long time, so I was very excited to purchase the template for this project.
The original template for this box was in PDF format, intended to be printed and then cut by hand. Since I preferred to have it cut on my Silhouette, I converted it into a svg cut file and made a few changes. Instead of the separate top fitting lid of the original box, I decided to edit the template by welding the lid piece to the main skull piece so it would cut as a single piece and left the flap on the top of the skull unglued as a flip style lid. Nose and eye sockets were changed to be cut instead of printed on the skull and teeth were changed to be a print and cut.
Then just for fun I added bows with spiders, skull eye patches, rhinestone catch lights in the eye sockets, and lots of Stickles glitter glue.
Back of the skull looked so bare so I added a sentiment.
Thankfully these skull boxes were pretty quick to assemble once they were cut so I was able to get a dozen done in time for fright night.
Frank and Polah are getting dressed up to attend the Monster Mash tonight! Have a safe and fun Halloween!
Halloween is just a few days away and I'm still frantically trying to get some treat boxes finished! But I'm excited to share this pumpkin shaped sliceform pop up card that we mailed to our granddaughter last week as part of her Halloween surprise package.
This sliceform pop up is designed similar to the golf sliceform pop up sphere I shared in my previous post. However, this pumpkin pop up is only about 4.5 inches tall and 4.75 inches wide; so approximately half the size of the golf pop up. It also has a lot less layers, required only 2-1/2 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock, and was much easier to assemble.
Instead of using all white cardstock as I had for the golf sliceform pop up, I decided to use Halloween colors for the layers like the sample photo I saw on the designer's web page, M3D Art Craft by Tran Thi Muoi. But after finishing the assembly, I realized the colored cardstock seemed to make everything look darker and it was difficult to see the details of the scene inside the pumpkin. I tried lining the edges of all the cuts inside the pumpkin with Stickles glitter glue which seemed to help a little, but not enough.
To provide the needed amount of light to illuminate the pumpkin pop up, I decided to create a paper lamp base using a free template provided on the 3D Fancy website. I placed a string of 20 LED Fairy Lights inside the base, placed the pumpkin on top of it, and was very pleased that everything got a lot brighter.
The sliceform pumpkin flattened nicely to fit in an envelope but since the lamp base is not collapsible it had to be placed in a separate box. I included a sheet with simple instructions so our 7 year old granddaughter can easily set it up for display.
I'm finding these sliceform pop ups are challenging and fun to cut and assemble. They are available in different shapes and sizes and I'm looking forward to giving a few of these a try.
After having made sliceform sphere shaped lanterns for hubby's birthday and to send to our granddaughter for Halloween, I thought I would challenge myself to make them as Christmas gift card holders for family and friends.
