Girls Day Origami Ningyo

Happy Girls Day! I'm excited to share these Girls Day treats I received from my talented and crafty friend, Lorna this year. 
 

Lorna very cleverly used her origami skills to fold the beautiful kimonos for these Girls Day "ningyo" (dolls) for these treat holders. She used the print and cut feature on her electronic cutter to create the  heads and attached them to the origami kimonos to bring her dolls to life. Underneath, a mochi treat wrapped in rice paper serves as the stand for this sweet doll.

For this super kawaii treat box, Lorna created Girls Day prince and princess dolls sitting with  traditional "hishi mochi" (tricolor diamond shaped mochi), and displayed them on a doll stand.

The tricolor diamond shaped mochi is actually a box filled with more mochi and milk candies! I love that Lorna never fails to come up with the most original ideas to delight everyone she shares her creative treats with!

Girls Day Treat Boxes

In celebration of Girls Day on March 3rd, I made these boxes to fill with chichi dango mochi and cookies to share with my girlfriends. 

The inspiration for my Girls Day boxes came from this adorable Chinese New Year slide and lock box treat holder created by my sweet crafty friend, Lori.  The round bunny scallop embellishment on the front of the box is actually a slider piece that "locks" or keeps the box closed. Her box is 2-3/4 inches square and an inch in depth; a perfect size for sharing wrapped chocolates with friends. Detailed measurements and instructions for assembly for this fun box by Brenda Quintana can be found here.

I really liked the concept of the sliding/locking embellishment and decided to try a larger version for sharing my mochi and cookies. The final size for my larger box was 4-1/2 inches square and 1-1/2 inches deep. Svg file for the kokeshi doll comes from Creative Fabrica. I used the tree die from Karen Burniston's Tiny Tree Pop Up die set for the branch and Frantic Stamper's Petite Sakura die for the cherry blossoms.

Another feature I like about this box is that it's pretty sturdy and can hold fairly heavy treats (like mochi!) thanks to the strip of printed cardstock that gets wrapped around the sides of the box.

Here's a side view of the slider/lock element which is made from 2 circles and 3 scalloped circles glued together. Original instructions calls for 4 scalloped circles but I swapped the scalloped circle on the backside with a plain circle so I could cut 2 elements out of a 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock.

    

Two of the scalloped circles were folded in half and glued to the back of the third, creating right and left "channels" to slide the box flaps into and hold them in place. Love that something so simple works so well! 

I was able to fit about 10 pieces of mochi or 10 medium sized sugar cookies into each box. These boxes are very quick to put together and can be easily sized up or down to your preference. It's also nice to know that the slider element can be almost any shape... definitely need to play around with that idea!

I have two more Girls Day treat holders to share before I close. Both of these amazing treasures were created by my dear friend Lorna.

This tag shaped box is so adorable with a kawaii kokeshi dressed in a washi paper kimono and origami obi. If you look closely, you'll see the beautiful 3 dimensional cherry blossm design that's been cut onto the pearlized cardstock behind the little kokeshi doll.

Then Lorna took that beautiful 3D cherry blossom design up to a completely new level when she incorporated it into the lid of this fabulous cube shaped box! Each of the four sides of this box has a different paper pieced kokeshi doll, intricately dressed and adorned with washi and origami papers. This wonderful keepsake box will be treasured for many years.

Kawaii Kokeshi

Today I'm sharing some of sweet Girls Day treat boxes and Kokeshi doll paper crafts I recently received from my super creative and thoughtful friends.
 

I simply love this pretty Girls Day treat holder created by my dear friend Lorna. I think the blue she chose to use for her box is striking, and really makes her sweet kokeshi, the Asian diecut border and Mt. Fuji stand out so beautifully. Side view of her treat holder shows how Lorna constructed it to be a sleeve for a roll of yummy HiChew candies.

This adorable kokeshi doll card was also created by Lorna. She used the "Chibi Geisha Girl with Lantern" cutting file from SVG Cutting Files to cut and paper piece her kokeshi and added it to a shoji background with a branch of cherry blossoms. 

This ah-mazing origami octagon box was created by my crafty friend Kris' talented and creative aunt. This box is 5-1/2 inches in diameter, beautifully folded to showcase the colors and pattern of the double sided origami papers.

Here's a peek of the inside of the box and bottom of the box. I understand it takes 16 perfectly folded sheets of origami to create this box and lid. I love this, and really would love to give it a try one day... however my origami folding skills are really bad so it may take me a bit of practicing to create something as lovely as this is!

This is a wallet size ID /credit card holder/case that was decorated by my sweet and special friend, Claire. Claire also used the Chibi Geisha cutting file from SVG Cutting files for her Japanese girl. I really like how she added the die cut mini torii in the background, and the tiny double layered cherry blossoms with glittery centers really make this scene so pretty!

I am truly blessed to have so many thoughtful and crafty friends. I enjoy sharing their projects and hope that you may be inspired, as I always am by their creativity.

Girls Day Shaker Card

March 3rd was Girls Day and this is the card I made to send to our granddaughter this year. I received some very pretty cherry blossom clay polymer sprinkles for Christmas from a sweet friend and knew they would be perfect for a Girls Day shaker card.
 

I stamped and heat embossed images from Mama Elephant's "Lunar Extras" (cherry blossoms) and Sister Stamps "Harumi". Images were colored with Copics and Harumi's kimono was stamped and cut from washi paper. Scalloped window was cut on the Silhouette using a cutting file created in Make the Cut design program. Stamped sentiment inside the window is from Dandelion Designs "Love & Hugs". 

On the inside, I used the bottom layer of Karen Burniston's Pop Up Cake die to create a fun pop up "stage" for my kimono cuties. 

Stamped image is one of my all time favorites, "BFFs" from Sister Stamps. Kimonos were stamped and cut from washi papers. Cherry blossoms, leaves and shadows were cut on the Silhouette. I used Wiki C.A.P.S. Cherry Blossoms Outline die to cut the flower centers; and the large cherry blossom on the front was cut using the print and cut function with DJ Doodlers font.

     

The hexagonal shaped "stage" pop up in this card uses the same design mechanism as most of the stand alone hexagonal pop up cards being seen a lot on the internet recently. I really like Karen Burniston's version using her Pop Up Cake die because the pop up is installed inside the card, giving that "wow factor" as the card is opened. You can watch Karen's video tutorial here.

Here's a side view of the pop up stage where you can see I added three acetate struts; front, center, and back, where the cherry blossoms and stamped images were adhered. I'm enjoying playing with this pop up cake die, although I have to admit I haven't used it to make a pop up cake yet! I love that Karen Burniston always comes up with fun alternate ways to use her dies to create different styles of cards.

Special Girls Day Treats

Today I'm sharing two adorable treat boxes I received on Girls Day from my super talented and crafty friends, Lorna and Kris.

Kris put together this cute gable box and filled with yummy tricolor mochi. She decorated the sides of her treat box with panels of pretty origami paper and an adorable print and cut kokeshi doll image. Love this!

Lorna created another "knock your socks off" Girls Day treat box this year. Her kawaii paper pieced kokeshi is 3 dimensional, prettily sitting on a red stand with her fan and Japanese lantern. Wow, right?

Lorna made her stand from a piece of red cardstock which had been run through a cherry blossom embossing folder and wrapped around a foil pack of Glico Strawberry Pocky Sticks (yum!). Her little kokeshi doll is intricately dressed a lovely kimono created from layers of red foil and washi kimono.  Lorna even decorated the panels of the standing lantern with a mini cherry blossom stamps... so much attention to detail and so beautifully done! Lucky me, to have such talented friends who inspire me with their amazing creativity!

Treats for Hinamatsuri

Yesterday (March 3rd) was Hinamatsuri or Girls Day, a Japanese traditional holiday when we celebrate girls and wish them good health and happiness. Here is the card I put together to send to our granddaughter.

Finally had the chance to try out Karen Burniston's Triple Flip die which I got on sale last year. I decided to use three different kokeshi images from Kokolo Designs on Etsy for the three flaps on the front of my card, rendering them into cut files for paper piecing in Make the Cut design program. I used the fill in and print and cut features for their kimonos and  mini punches from Punch Bunch for the tiny cherry blossoms and leaves in their hair.

Here's the fun part of this card: when you pull on the tab on the right with the arrow, the three front flaps open simultaneously, to display what's on the other side of the flaps as well as under the first flap.

The entire interactive triple flip panel was adhered to a side opening card where I added our sentiment inside. I really liked that this was a pretty easy and fun card to put together. I did have a few issues with "catch points" on the flaps which caused two of the flaps not to open, but I was able to easily remedy this by trimming away a sliver from the right edge of the flaps.

For friends and family, I put a dozen of these boxes together to hold some chichi dango mochi treats.

I got the original template and cutting file for this box called "Slide Box with Snowflake", designed by Pebbles In My Pocket from the Lori Whitlock Store. For my box, I swapped out the snowflake on the original template for a cherry blossom, and enlarged it from a 3 inch square box to one that was about 4-1/2 inch square.

The slits in the center of the cherry blossoms creates the slide closure on the front of the box and a tab closure keeps the remaining two sides of the box in tact. A clean and simple design, and I really like the rounded curved edges.

Here's the mochi that was wrapped in decorative waxed papers and packed in mini bento containers before putting them into the slide boxes. Aren't the hinamatsuri stickers adorable? Stickers and pretty waxed papers were both purchased from "Celebrations" a local Japanese gift and packaging store in Honolulu. Hope everyone had a fun time celebrating Girls Day this year!

RAKs to Rave about!

I'm embarrassed to say that I've been remiss in sharing all of the wonderful handmade cards and gifts that I've received in the last year due to my chronic disorganization. Trying to get back on track with today's post of some of the projects from my pals Lorna and Patti of Creations By Patti.

These three super kawaii treat holders were created by none other than my uber talented friend, Lorna.                                  

Isn't this the cutest little Valentine treat box? Lorna used paper piecing cutting files from Doodlebug's "So Punny" collection to put together this adorable shoyu and sushi pair.

I fell in love with this sweet kokeshi treat holder at first sight! Lorna paper pieced this chibi kokeshi with SVG Cutting Files' Chibi Geisha Girl with Lantern which sits atop a portion/condiment cup filled with goodies, wrapped with delicate Japanese tissue and secured with a green satin ribbon adorned with tiny paper sakura. So many intricate details make this so special!

Every year I look forward to receiving Lorna's New Years Daruma  treat holder. This year is the Year of the Pig/Boar and how cute is this little piggy daruma with a little tangerine on his head! Totally adorbs!

This lovely easel desk calendar/trinket holder was created by my dear friend, Patti of Creations By Patti. Patti used her amazing copic coloring skills to bring "Beautiful Life Marci" from La-la Land Crafts to life. Pretty glittered cardstock embellished with  La-la Land Crafts' lantern, cherry blossom, and pagoda die cuts complete this treasured gift.

This mini tag album is another treasured keepsake created by Patti. She used La-la Land Crafts' Large Stitched Tag die set to cut tags from heavy cardstock; adhering several layers together to create this  album. Each page in this 12 paged album is unique, with pockets, sliding elements, or fold outs to reveal additional pages. Truly amazing work.

And finally, this is Patti's Chinese New Year card, starring Hello Kitty dressed in her adorable piggy costume. Inside, a die cut greeting in Mandarin, "XinNian KuaiLe" or "Happy New Year"! 

I am truly blessed to have such talented and creative friends who continue to inspire me and get me excited about crafting.