Crafty Treasures from Special Friends

Couldn't go on without sharing some of the crafty goodness I received from special friends this month.
 

This handmade calendar and card came in the mail recently from my sweet friend, Lynn.

I think this die cut "maneki neko" (lucky cat) is so adorable with his stylized "fu" (for good fortune) character on his tummy and shiny gold bell and baker's twine collar. I really liked how Lynn rolled the ends of a piece of cardstock to create a scroll, stamped with Chinese characters "gan xie" (for gratitude) for lucky cat to hold up.  The neatest thing about this lucky cat is that he can be lifted from the card front to sit upright on his mat, using his little tail as an easel stand!

Lynn also sent along this super cute Valentine easel desk calendar featuring  a stamped, colored, and fussy cut image of my all time favorite Pooh bear. 

My amazingly creative friend Lorna made this pair of kawaii Valentine treat holders.

Reminiscent of  the silk rose truffle holders seen at fancy weddings, Lorna cut and folded the petals of this fabulous rose from red cardstock to create this sweet rose candy holder. Look carefully and you'll see Hershey kisses and Dove chocolate hearts tucked in the center of the rose. Little Mocha Bear standing on the petals with his bouquet of roses just doubles the cuteness of this treat holder!

Lorna also pieced together this irresistible pink "maneki neko" (lucky cat) as a Valentine treat holder. I wasn't even aware that different colored lucky cats represent different things. Pink lucky cats represent romance and brings love; perfect for Valentines Day!

My dear crafty friend Kris put together this sweet heart shaped basket perfect for a fellow crafter (like me!). This sturdy and roomy basket has room enough for a lot of treats. I love that Kris filled it with crafters' favorites... diamond glaze and chocolates! The template for this cute basket was designed by Kim of Crafting Cheerfully.

Hope you enjoyed seeing crafty projects from friends and hope they may have inspired  your creative juices as much as they did for me.

We PIKA - CHOOSE You, Valentine!

We recently learned that our granddaughter had started watching the Pokemon anime series and has become quite a fan of little Pikachu. Well, you know this gramma loves a theme, so I grabbed the Pikachu theme and ran with it for Valentines Day.

I found a svg cut file template for this cute Pikachu domed candy holder by Mirachefamira Studio on Etsy which I thought our granddaughter would enjoy. I used half of a clear plastic ball ornament for the domed candy holder. The base of the original template is a circle, but since this was for Valentines Day, I glued it onto a heart shaped base.

The original template included a fancy notched rotating window underneath to access the candies in the dome but I decided to switch it to the simpler hexagonal petal envelope closure that I am more familiar working with.

I also preferred that the petal style envelope gave me a place to add a fun card enclosure. Access to candies is inside the envelope behind the card. I created a simple "Pokeball" card in the shape of a heart with our sentiment inside. This included a clipart of another Pokemon named "Evee", which happens to be the nickname we lovingly call our granddaughter by.

This personalized hinged box decorated with another paper pieced Pokeball held a surprise pop up Valentine inside. When the hinged lid of the box is lifted . . .

little Pikachu pops up inside!

"We Pika-Choose YOU to be our Valentine!"

Inspired by several creative members on the Karen Burniston Pop Up Peeps Facebook group, I wanted to try recreating Pikachu too, using Karen Burniston's Mini Ball Pop Up dies and stacking two of them on top of each other. These rubber band activated pop up balls have been used to create so many different fun creatures and characters!

After adding on Pikachu's ears, face, arms, feet and tail, I had him hold two glittered hearts and secured him to a glittered heart shaped base with a brad so he could swivel around. If you look closely at the previous photo you may be able to see that I added two pieces of  the printed cardstock on the right and left inside the box to create a channel where Pikachu's heart shaped base could be slid into. Not certain if this creature resembles Pikachu enough or not but I had lots of fun putting him together!

You're a True Gem, Valentine!

 

Happy Valentines Day! These are the boxes filled with cookies I made to share with my "Gal-entines" this year.

I fell in love with these unique 3-D heart shaped boxes I saw online after Valentines Day last year and promised myself to make them for the following year...so here they are!

There are several slightly different shaped versions of 3-D Heart Box templates by different designers available; this one I chose to use is by Nilmara Quintela on Etsy. I thought the beveled edges on the box cover reminded me of a heart shaped gem so I created insets for each beveled panel in Make the Cut Design program, cut them from pink and red glittered cardstock, and glued them to the top to make the boxes shimmer like a gemstone. I used silver foil board and Waffle Flower's "Love Word" die to cut the script word love.

Inside, I filled the boxes with hubby's favorite buttery Lace Cookies. The boxes were quite roomy inside because of the beveled top and I was able fit six cookies in each box.

Last, I added my heart shaped computer generated sentiment to the bottom of the boxes. Thank you for dropping by today! I have a few more Valentines Day themed projects to share but will wait till I know our granddaughter has received them.

Happy New Year of the Dragon

Kung Hei Fat Choy!  I'm finally back after my holiday break. Today marks the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and this year we celebrate the Year of the Dragon.

I baked batches of almond cookies to share with family and friends and created these boxes to put them in. 

The design of my cookie boxes was inspired by the four-sided lantern style boxes often seen used as favors at weddings. After looking at several illustrations of  templates for these wedding favor boxes online, I tried to design something similar in Make the Cut Design Studio by welding together a few basic shapes. I then sized my box to be large enough to hold half a dozen or more cookies and added legs to the bottom of it to make it look like an Asian style lantern.

Two sides of the box were decorated using a free dragon image from Vecteezy.  A stencil cut of the image was created in Make the Cut and pieced together using gold foil board and red pearlescent text weight paper. On the alternate sides I used Spellbinders Destination China: Chinese Coin Window die to cut a  frame from gold foil board. The Chinese character for "dragon" was traced in Make the Cut to create the layered stencil image in the center.

I also put together several of these fun "laisee" or Chinese lucky red envelopes decorated with a whimsical paper pieced dragon, inspired by Tsuki-san on Pixta Japan.   The dragon's head was adhered to the flap of the envelopes separately from the dragon's body so recipients could lift the dragon's head up to open the envelope.

I  was excited to use my new Chinese character "Fu" (for good fortune) wax stamp to make wax seals to add to the envelopes. I tried the double layered wax technique for the first time to get the gold wax border around the red wax and colored the "Fu" character using a Marvy DecoColor gold metallic paint pen.

I also want to share these super cute Year of the Dragon lucky money bag treat holders that I received from my dear friend, Lorna. Lorna very cleverly origami folded Chinese red envelopes into the shape of a Chinese Lucky Bag, and decorated it with an adorable paper pieced Hello Kitty dressed in a dragon costume.

I also received this fun Year of the Dragon Chinese New Year pop up card in the mail this week from my crafty friend, Bev. I love the lantern design digital paperon the front of the card. The sentiment "Gong Xi Fa Cai" is Mandarin whereas "Kung Hei Fat Choy" is the Cantonese pronounciation of the same greeting, meaning "Wishing you prosperity".

For the pop up feature inside, Bev used the mechanism from Karen Burniston's "Rocket Pop Up" die. As the card is opened the dragon inside pops forward and slides to the right... so fun! Happy New Year!

(P.S. I will be slowly adding back dated posts of  my 2023 Christmas projects so you may scroll backward to older posts if you're interested.)