Gene's Creations

Here's a trio of Asian inspired papercraft projects created by yet another talented and very special friend, Gene. I was lucky enough to steal away just a couple hours of this busy lady's time while we were on vacation to sit and chat when she presented me with these beautifully handcrafted, jaw dropping gems!

Here's a closer look at the breathtaking framed kimono piece. Beautiful layered kimono was cut from washi paper using an old kimono template from Stampendous and mounted onto the background of gold calligraphy using foam core.

Love how this brass lantern medallion and tassel really adds interest to this one-of-a-kind work of art! The Japanese kanji characters on the medallion read "hei-wa" or PEACE. This amazing art has already found a home, displayed on my etagere in our living room for everyone to admire!

Here's the stunning card that came together with her gifts. I had never seen this style of card before, but Gene told me the idea for this originally comes from Norice at Creations Unlimited...LOVE it!!! A little difficult to tell from the photo, but this is a quad-fold card with a window. The pink and white background piece you see peeking from the window is actually a sheet of accordion folded printed paper adhered to the back of the card, giving this card really neat depth and dimmension.

Inside the window is a tiny punched origami tsuru, hanging from a thin gold thread....so pretty! Window cards are a big favorite with me; hope to give this one a try one day!

And here's Gene's annual calendar, which I have come to look forward to each year. She created a tent style easel calendar this year...don't you just love the beautiful gold and silver pink sakura washi paper paired with the contrasting "shoji-like" base? Three precious and lovely mementos from a very special friend. I am indeed a lucky lady.

Treasured Keepsake, Treasured Friend

Every once in a lifetime you might be fortunate enough to come across someone so special, so thoughtful, generous and so amazing that you can hardly believe that she would ever consider you as her friend. I am one of those lucky people who met such a person; she is none other than my dear friend Patti, of Creations by Patti. One of the biggest highlights of my recent vacation was to have the chance to spend a fun filled day shopping and talking and shopping and talking some more with this very special lady. And to top it off, she presented me with a bag filled with surprises...including this TOTALLY AMAZING keepsake trinket box...WOW, right?!!!

Everything about this box is artfully and beautifully done; with so much attention to details, just like everything Patti creates. Inside of the box is lined with one of my favorite sakura papers from My Little Shoebox...really liked how she stained all the edges of this chipboard box from La La Land to give it the look of a real wooden box.

She even added these little wooden feet (made by bf Ricky) underneath, raising the box just slightly off the tabletop for a subtle touch of elegance...

Love this double heart hinge accent piece on the side...and...

WooHoo!!! Feast your eyes on all the amazing and beautiful dies and accents Patti put together to showcase this lovely Kimono Marci with Fan image from La La Land on the cover of this box. She even created each of those sweet roses using rolled rose dies! And as always, I continue to be in awe of her fabulous Copic coloring skills! The time and love she put into creating this stunning work of art shows...no one does Asian Shabby Chic like Patti! You can see more pics, the supplies she used, and all the deets on how she created this treasure here on her blog. I promise, you will be amazed!

Spring Time RAKs from Lorna

Seems I'm still trying to catch up on the regular life routine at home after vacation...I'm a bit late on posting, but definitely had to share these sweet Easter surprises I discovered in my locker when I returned to work...all from my dear friend Lorna!

Awww...isn't this bunny treat cup the cutest thing ever?!!! Look closely and you'll see that it's actually one of those plastic condiment cups dressed up to look like a little bunny! So cute and clever, huh.

Love how Lorna decorated this cheerful treat box with washi tape, pretty daisy flocked ribbon and daisy cuts! The adorable little duckling in the center of the bow is a stamped image from Dandelion Designs.

And look! Even more cuteness inside the box! Notice how each of those yummy chocolate eggs is nestled in it's own little cut out to hold them nicely in place in the box.

Even more treats to be found tucked inside this darling little Easter basket! Lorna very cleverly decorated her basket with a strip of that same daisy flocked ribbon sprinkled with more punched daisies. A little harder to see, but Lorna also added a green scallop circle on the base of her basket to make it look like it's sitting on grass...really adds a neat finishing touch! And don't you just love how that happy little duckie looks like he's popping out with Happy Easter wishes?
Needless to say, finding all of these wonderful treats waiting for me on my first day back to work certainly made it a lot easier to get back into the swing of things. But wait! There's more....!

It just so happened that my first day back to work was also Boy's Day... Yup, you guessed it, Lorna showed up with this fabulous Boys Day surprise for each of us! (Isn't she just AMAZING?)  In Japan, families celebrate their sons on Boys Day often by putting up displays which include samurai warrior helmets or "kabuto". Lorna created her own super cute origami version of this by using pearlescent gold paper to fold into helmets and place them on little display stands! The delightful little Japanese boy image and Happy Boys Day sentiment she used are stamps from Dandelion Designs.

Lifting the origami helmet off the stand reveals all the yummy treats hidden inside the stand! Yes, yes, I agree...this girl's creativity is just out of this world! I would love to peek inside her brain to see how she comes up with all these amazing ideas all the time. Thank you again, Lorna for all the wonderful treats, for making my first day back to work fun, and for continuously fueling my creative spirit.

For Our Special Moms

Had so much fun with my first Card in a Box card that I wanted to do more...this time for our Mothers Day cards. We just got back from visiting with my daughter and son in law in Cali, and also spent a few days vacationing in Vegas... so I came home to a long list of cards and projects I was totally behind on...Mothers Day, thank you cards, birthdays, graduations...YIKES! It's a good thing this Card In a Box is so super quick and easy to put together!

On the inside of the box, I added some fun flower cuts I picked up from Miss Kate Cuttables. Cut these on my Silhouette from plain white cardstock and colored them in with Copics...I found this was much easier for me than trying to decide on different colored papers for all the different layers. Cute litte peeking doggie is a cutfile from Little Scraps of Heaven. Butterflies and leafy flourishes were cut using dies from Cheery Lynn Designs.

Here's a view from the top to show the placement of the die cuts on the struts inside the box. I used strips of clear acetate attached to the flowers inside the box to position them at the heights I wanted.

In it's closed position, the card lays flat to easily slip into an envelope. I added our sentiment to the back panel using a label image found from a Google image search and had MTC create a cutfile for it. Fonts used are Brock Script and CK Script.

Then for a little sweet treat for the all the moms to take home after our family dinner get together, I baked up a couple batches of lemon shortbread cookies. I used the School Kine Cookie recipe found here  and added a couple teaspoonfuls of lemon extract and a bit of lemon icing.

Didn't have enough time to make boxes or decorate gift bags for the cookies so I simply put them in cellophane bags tied with a bow and added a tag. These are from the Cricut Wrap It Up cartridge...quick and easy and kinda pretty.

And...of course I couldn't end this post without sharing the first and CUTEST Mothers Day treat I received this year. From none other than my sweet friend Lorna, check out these pretty little post it note holders she made for all of us at work.

Just love this kokeshi "mama" stamped and washi-pieced image from Dandelion Designs that she used to decorate these! Notice the little baby kokeshi perched on mama's back? CUTE!!!! Thank you again, Lorna for bringing so much happy to us at work!
Happy, happy Mothers Day to all you hardworking, caring and loving moms! Today celebrates how very special each of you are....enjoy your day!

What Does the Fox Say?

"Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!"

(That's what the fox says...) 

LOL...I've had this silly song by Ylvis stuck in my mind for awhile now, and thought it would make a fun birthday card for my niece.
Seems like card crafters everywhere have been having fun putting together their own versions of this "Card in a Box"... and of course I was anxious to give it a try as well! There are a lot of tutorials out on the web for this style of card, and they're all basically the same. For my card, I followed the one by Carol at Extreme Cards and Papercrafting mostly because I thought her method of adding the struts to the inside of the box was the easiest to do.

As always, the funnest part about this card is embellishing and making it your own. The cutting file I used for these cute foxes comes from Designs On Cloud 9's "Foxy" file.

This adorable elephant is from the "Safari Animals" cutting file from Kadoodle Bug Designs and tiny butterfly was cut using the "Bunny and Butterflies" die from Cottage Cutz.

Pink birdie and trees are from Cricut Create A Critter cartridge. Word balloons and labels were created in MTC.

Here's a view from the top...

...and a view of the back of the card where I added the sentiment. Underneath the sentiment I added a little pocket where I could slip in some birthday $$$ or a gift card.

And finally, the flattened view. Just for fun, I also added word balloons of "what the fox says" to the front and side flaps to give a "hint" to what was on the inside. Had so much fun putting this "card in a box" together; and the best part is that the base card is so easy to do that you can spend a lot of time on being creative about what to put inside your box. Can't wait to try another one of these soon!

Last Minute Easter Baskets

Happy Easter! I was a little pre-occupied with other things and didn't get to do as much as I would have liked for Easter this year, but I did find just enough time to put together a few of these little baskets for friends and family. Good thing these were pretty quick to do!

I first saw these cute baskets with an easy to follow tutorial over at Whimsie Doodles. I needed my baskets to be just a bit larger so I could fit some cookies in them so I used a 7-1/2 inch square piece of cardstock instead.  I used a Martha Stewart double loops edge punch to add a little lace to the handles.

This cute little paper pieced chick comes from the Trio of  Chicks cutfile from My Scrap Chick, and the bunny with eggs was created using MTC to render an image I found on the internet. Because I was pressed for time, I ended up having my Silhouette machine cut all the pieces for the bunny, chick and eggs from plain white cardstock and used Copic pens to quickly color the pieces after cutting while still on the mat. This saved me time from having to select all the different colored cardstock and loading and reloading to cut the different pieces.

And for our sweet furbaby friends, I decorated a few gift bags to fill with Easter treats using a cute puppy and bunny ears cutfile from Treasure Box Designs...
Happily, I was able to finish eight of these baskets and doggie bags just in time for giving. Hope everyone is having an enjoyable time today spent with family and friends!

Sweet Ayako Birthday Card

Yup, it's yet another one of those sliding pop-up box cards I enjoy doing so much. This was made for my mom's birthday and  is the same basic box design from Colette's Sliding Pop Up Box card, except that I brought the sides of the box up taller and had my Silhouette Cameo cut an octagonal window on the front panels. I also added "tabs" to the side corners of the box to make it easier to "push" the card open and "pull" it flat to close.

This time I used adorable little Ayako from Sister Stamps to peek out the octagonal window. Colored her up with copics and placed her on a die cut bridge from Lala Land Crafts which I attached to the sliding element inside the box. Printed double sided cardstock for this card comes from Best Creation's Kimono line...really love that lavender wisteria background behind Ayako! Branch accent on the front was cut from a Quickutz die and tiny blossoms were cut with a die from Cheery Lynn Designs.

Here's a view of the box from the top, which gives a better perspective of the shape of the card and shows where the bridge was attached to the sliding element inside the box.

Pulling on the "tabs" on the sides flattens the card so it can be slipped into an envelope.I love the versatility of the sliding box card and as you can tell, I'm still having way too much fun playing with this style of card!