Touched by Kindness

As promised, today I'm sharing some fun crafty treasures I recently received from two very sweet and thoughtful friends.

My dear friend Bev warmed my heart again this year with another beautifully handmade Mothers Day card. I love the clever design of this box card shaped as a tea cup with brightly colored blooms! Bev's thoughtful gesture of sharing her love with the cards she creates during Mothers Day and other special occasions always brings much cheer and has inspired me to try to do the same.

This fun spa inspired Mothers Day gift is from my amazingly creative friend, Lorna. Lorna wrapped a bar of scented soap with delicate Japanese tissue and embellished with this totally adorable paper pieced bubble bath girl. Definitely outside the box creative, right? And Omgosh, how cute is that little rubber duckie!

But wait, don't put your cuteness monitor away just yet! This super kawaii Boys Day treat box, also designed by Lorna pushes the cuteness level sky high!  I love how she rolled washi papers to make flying carp windsocks and suspended them in air with beads strung on fishing line. Isn't it amazing what a little paper, beads, ribbon and fishing line can create when you have the creative prowess of Lorna?

Before I sign off today, I wanted to let you know that I was recently notified that Feedburner will no longer be providing email notifications for my blog posts. I honestly thought it had ceased to function a while back, but if you'd like to receive some sort of notification, the platform I currently personally use is Bloglovin'.

Celebrating Boys Day with Kintaro

May 5th is Tango no Sekku and Kodomo No Hi or Children's Day in Japan. Originally celebrated as Boys Day, many families display doll, sword and helmet collections in their home and fly Koinobori or carp windsocks outside. And every year, my sweet and talented crafty friend Lorna puts together an amazing Asian inspired treat box to celebrate the day. This year she featured an adorable paper pieced "Kintaro" with his ax, together with cute little flying carp!

"Kintaro"  or "Golden Boy" is well known in Japanese children folklore as a little boy with super human strength. He is often portrayed in ceramic or porcelain as a doll or figurine displayed during Boys Day.

I haven't made anything for Boys Day for quite a while, but I thought this might be a good time to share these Pochacco popcorn boxes I put together recently. Earlier this year I had to come up with a quick and simple box to hold some Cheetos/Bugles/Fritos snack mix I wanted to share with some friends. I decided to try a popcorn box that looked like Pochacco...LOL, when I finished the first one I thought it looked so strange, but when hubby saw it, he immediately recognized it as Pochacco... "Hey, that's Pochacco!" So I decided to go with it.

Anyways, the main thing was that it was really quick to put together and large enough to hold the snack mix!

Boys Day and Mothers Day Surprises

I'm a few weeks late in sharing these wonderful treat boxes from my sweet friend Lorna that were waiting for me when I returned to work after vacation. Finding these two kawaii surprises in my locker instantly brightened my day and made having to return to work seem not so bad!

This adorable boy kokeshi treat box immediately stole my heart! Lorna paper pieced his kimono with washi paper, and oh my, don't you just love his spiky hair?!!! She attached a small box in between the front and back pieces of the doll to hold the yummy Boys Day treats...sweet!

For this super kawaii Mothers Day box, Lorna wrapped a piece of cardstock around the candy for the kimono and added a strip of washi paper for the obi sash. Mama kokeshi's head was print and cut, then attached to the top of the kimono. Oh! And there's even a little baby kokeshi riding on Mama kokeshi's back...too CUTE!
A big thank you to Lorna for always making and sharing the BEST and most creative treat holders ever!

Boys Day Gift Card Holder

Thursday is "Kodomo No Hi" or Childrens Day in Japan; also still known as "Tango No Sekku" or Boys Day. No boys in our family except my son in law; and though he might be all grown up, I still enjoy sending him fun stuff on Boys Day just to let him know how much we love him!

While in Japan recently, we were delighted to find Peanuts boutique shops filled with the cutest Japanese gifts and trinkets featuring my favorite beagle. I guess little Snoopy continues to capture the hearts of all, worldwide. So when I came across an adorable image of Snoopy riding a koi nobori windsock on Pinterest, I thought it would be perfect to use on a gift card holder. I used Make the Cut (MTC) to trace the image and render it into a cutting file, and had my Silhouette cut the pieces from white and black cardstock. Colored the pieces with Copics before piecing it all together. Embroidery floss was then threaded through the finished piece for the reins.

Put paper pieced Snoopy onto an oval backing and adhered it to a double hinged box with an pop up insert to hold the gift card in place. Nothing fancy, but I'm hoping my son in law liked it.

A video tutorial by Crafty Caroline for a hinged box can be found here, and the cutting file for the pop gift card holder insert is from the Holiday Cheer Collection at SVG Attic.

And just for fun, here's our furbaby Latte, dressed for the occasion donning her origami samurai helmet and koi nobori pinwheel wishing you all a "Happy Boys Day!!!!"

Goodies for Mothers Day and Boys Day

A little late with this post, but these are the treat bags and cookie boxes I barely finished in time for our Mothers Day dinner. I think I waited too long to start baking the cookies, mostly because I felt uncertain about how long they would keep, and then it was a mad rush to get everything put together in time. The cookies were Oatmeal Lacies...thin, crisp and buttery...not hard to make, but a little different than the usual cookie dough. They're quite delicious while crispy, but unfortunately they tend to wilt quickly in humid weather conditions like we have here in the islands. Waited till the last minute to bake them in hopes they'd be fresh and still crisp when I passed them out. Got the recipe for them here, if you'd like to give them a try.

Inspired by some pretty stencil cut boxes I saw over at the online Silhouette store, I decided to try designing something similar to put the cookies in, using the stencil cut rose file from the Cricut Wrap It Up cartridge. Had to keep it clean and simple so assembling would be quick once I got the pieces cut on the Silhouette.

Also created a  simple topper for the gift bag the boxes went in using the same rose and leaves stencil and a scalloped edge. Very fast and easy, though maybe a little too plain? Ah well, at least they got done in time!

Now, here's a look at two Mothers Day treats that aren't simple or plain at all that I was lucky enough to receive this year from sweet friends!

This super cute kokeshi chopsticks holder was made by none other than my dear friend Lorna, using a cutfile she designed. Aww...isn't that little baby kokeshi just too adorable? And the luscious pink macarons you see were a gift from our friend the master patissier, sweet Heather. Almost too pretty to eat but totally light as a cloud and melt in your mouth delicious!

Lorna also surprised us a week prior to Mothers Day with these fabulous Boys Day treats. You can just imagine all the excitement that went on at our workplace when she brought these amazing koi nobori candy holders in to share!

Lorna designed her koi from one of those paper party popper boxes, using an envelope punch board to create the pattern and trimming it at one end to look like a fish. She created the very cool scales on the fish by running her cardstock thru an embossing folder inked up with a shimmery ink pad...love it! Circle and heart punches for the eyes and fin, and a Chupa Chups lollipop placed inside a straw for the holder...amazing, right?

Celebrating Boys Day with Pochacco

Happy Boys Day! Today, May 5th was traditionally celebrated as Boys Day or "Tango no Sekku" in Japan until recent times when it was changed to Childrens Day or "Kodomo no hi". But traditional Boys Day customs still seem to persist and Japanese families continue to display samurai warrior swords, helmets and dolls in their homes, and fly "koinobori" or carp streaners outdoors. For Boys Day this year, I wanted to surprise my son in law with some "happy mail" so I got a few Boys Day treats and a made a fun gift card holder to send him.

Finally decided to give the pop up gift card holder everyone else has been making for years a try. Lots and lots of tutorials on the web for these. I used the tutorial for a tri-fold one by Angie Leach on her blog Too Cool Stamping. Really like how she added a window to the front panel!
For the front of my card, I created a cutfile for adorable little Pochacco holding a fish to add to the window.

Here's the card opened with the gift card standing in the center. Found some cute and colorful koinobori images by doing a Google search and added them as a border to the inside of the card. More cutesy than masculine, but I'm hoping my son in law will like it!

Create A Critter for Boys Day

Just recently got my Create A Critter cartridge and am lovin' it the the max! So many cutesy animals and bugs all in one cartridge. Hoping Provocraft continues to come out with more like this!
My first card with this cart was a Boys Day card created for my dd's bf. The inspiration for this card came from Jin Yong's "Sunny Days - Panda Family" card which she created and posted on her blog, Under A Cherry Tree. You'll find her cute card posted on her April 26th post. If you haven't discovered this blog yet, you must hop on over and see all her sweet and darling creations! I used the same Panda cut and changed him up just a little by bringing one of his arms up so he could hold on to his red carp kite.


The carp cut comes from another new favorite cartridge, Pagoda. I cut away part of the front of the card for the grassy background and mounted my panda (popped up with foam tape) onto it to create sort of a semi shaped card.

Super duper easy, but so cute!

Samurai Warrior Helmet & Flying Carp

Last year while searching for ideas for Boys Day cards, I came across several images of samurai warrior helmets called "kabuto" which are typically displayed to celebrate the occasion. At that time I was in too much of a hurry to work on a cutfile so instead, I ended up altering a cutfile of a fish to create a "koi nobori" or flying carp decoration for a Boys Day card for dd's bf last year. I came across those same helmet images again this year, and somehow they didn't seem quite as intimidating this time. I decided to give it a try on Design Studio. Using shapes from the George and Jasmine cartridges to create the cutfile, it surprisingly came together pretty quickly. Piecing it all together and adding the details, including making the cord out of dmc thread, is what took time. I used Bazzill Tuxedo Bling cardstock for the base and coordinating washi paper, metallic and currency gold cardstocks to embellish; a krylon gold leafing pen for the outline details and a small sakura punch for the helmet decoration. For the cording, I took a length of dmc embroidery thread, separated it into two lengths of four strands, then twisted and twisted and twisted (!) until it started looking like a cord. To finish, I tied a knot and separated the strands at the end to resemble a tassle. It was a lot of work, but I was really happy with how it turned out.

I came across the cutest decorated fish cookies while shopping at the mall for Boys Day goodies. Thought dd's bf might enjoy getting these, since I know he likes frosted animal cookies. I wanted to be sure they got to him in one piece so I made this giftbox and decorated the top with a pair of flying carp.

I used shapes from the George and Plantin Schoolbook cartridges to create this cutfile. The printed cardstock on the cover is from the new DCWV Glittered Spring Stack...I really liked how the design kind of reminded me of fish scales and thought it would be perfect for this project.

Although we continue to celebrate May 5th as Boys Day (Tango no Sekku), it is officially celebrated in Japan as Childrens Day (Kodomo no Hi). And of course, I couldn't send dd a care package without something special for HER too, right? This is the little Hello Kitty designer bag I made for dd to wrap up her surprise limited edition HK Mac lipgloss. (Who, in their right mind spends so much for lipgloss? I must be nuts!)

Cambria Turnbow has a great tutorial on her blog for the designer bag. I used black semigloss Hallmark wrapping paper for this bag and decorated with a cut from the Hello Kitty Greetings cartridge and a Martha Stewart eyelet lace scallop border punch. The tab closure at the top of the bag is a DS cutfile I made using the George cartridge. Very quick and easy!

Happy Boys Day!

Boys Day Card made and sent to dd's bf. Fishies are a Cricut Design Studio cut file that was very generously shared on the Cricut Message board by Amanda K. The cut for these fishies are really amazing, mostly because Amanda created them by tediously welding together many, many little basic shapes...circles squares, rectangles and triangles from the George cartridge. I was in awe when I saw the actual cut file! This talented and generous lady shares many of her wonderful creations on her blog at Cricut Creations. The funny thing is, I think she might be a little surprised if she sees what I did to her fish...cut their mouths a bit wider and added the white to make them into koi nobori for Boys Day. The pole and spinner for the koi nobori, and the welding of the letters (Mickey font cart) were also created in Design Studio. Cute Boy's Day stamped image inside the card comes from Mari 'n Me.