Holiday Gift Tags

Only needed a few gift tags at the last minute for my holiday gift baskets this year so I pulled out my Karen Burniston Poinsettia dies to embellish tags. Flower petals were cut from red foil board and glitter cardstock. I used green foil board for the leaves.  Pearlescent and glitter gold cardstock was used for the flower centers. The tags were cut using Lawn Fawn Stitched Circle Tags die from red cardstock. Spellbinders Circle Nestabilities dies were used to cut the white inner circle.

I made bag tags again this year to help me identify and deliver the correct bags of gifts to the correct families. 

Last year I used paper clips to attach the tags to the bags but I found they slipped off the bags too easily so this year I used ribbon to snuggly tie the tags onto the handles of the bag where they could easily be spotted and read. This year I used a different Doodlebug polar bear print and cut image, adding the family name to each prior to cutting and small holes at the neck to thread the ribbon through. This worked out very well with no errors in gift deliveries again this year. Will definitely continue making these tags every Christmas.

 

Low Poly Polar Bears

Each year at Christmas I try my hardest to come up with a different way to give gift cards as gifts to family and friends. I'm not very good at buying gifts so I generally prefer to give gift cards so everyone can choose what they want. But since giving and getting gift cards sounds pretty boring, I like to make it  interesting by presenting them in some fun way. This year I decided to make polar bear gift card holders.

These 3 dimensional paper polar bears were put together using a modeling technique known as "Low Poly" named for the different polygons that comprise each piece. If you search the term "Low Poly" online you will come across hundreds of beautiful, and intricate 3D paper sculptures. My low poly polar bear is definitely beginner level but still challenging and fun for me to assemble. I purchased the svg template for this bear from Form You Design on Etsy. 

The biggest challenge I faced with this template was that for whatever reason, I was unable to import the svg file into Make the Cut Design program. This meant I had to finally bite the bullet and sit down to learn how to use Silhouette Design Studio. I probably only learned just the bare minimum to be able to import the files and group and ungroup as needed. Most importantly I was able to cut the 21 multiple scored pieces needed to assemble each polar bear.

Polar bear pieces were cut from textured pearlescent cardstock. After cutting, each piece and every scoreline on each piece had to be numbered and meticulously mountain or valley folded. Although assembly of the bears was slow and took time, I found it curiously enjoyable and relaxing. After finishing the assembly of 14 polar bears I thought they all looked  like they were missing a little something so I cut strips of red felt and fringed the ends to make scarves to wrap around their necks and warm them up a bit.

I needed a place to attach the gift cards so I made tapered  hexagonal "glacier" bases for each bear. I used pearlescent blue cardstock for these and added tabs underneath each base to hold a gift card.

The finished size of each polar bear together with the glacier base measured approximately 13 inches in height and 7 inches in width.

The bears were wrapped in cello bags with a silver taffeta bow. I made simple gift tags with a stamped sentiment and die cut glitter snowflake embellished with flatback rhinestones.

And just for fun... a photo of our furbaby "Polah Beah" together with her namesakes. I just couldn't resist taking of picture of them together!

 

Sweet Holiday Treats

This year my  holiday Chex Mix carrier featured a cute snowman from My Scrap Chick. I used "Frosty the Snowman Candy Bar Wrap" file, enlarging it to fit onto the front of my carrier. I swapped the snowflake in the file with one I die cut from glitter cardstock using "Let it Snowflake" die from MFT Die-namics.   
 

The carrier design is a simply a shallow box made to fit the bottom of my bag of Chex mix with two panels as tall glued on to the front and back. Holes are punched at the top to thread a ribbon through so a bow can be tied to keep the carrier closed.

For smaller bags of Chex Mix made for hubby to share with golf club friends, I simply printed up labels with an image of a golfing snowman.

I made several of these Hershey Kisses candy gift card holders which I had been wanting to make for the longest time. I followed the video tutorial by Kelly Acheson on her blog A Stamp Above to create a cutting file for my template. 

The back panel of this candy holder serves as the pocket where you can slide a gift card. Had fun decorating the boxes with a polar bear die cut using Marianne Designs "Eline's Arctic Bear" dies and Merry Christmas greeting cut using an Elizabeth Craft Designs word die. I thought this was a cute and easy way to make giving gift cards not seem so boring.