More Year of the Sheep Treats

Slowly but surely I'm finally catching up with my late blog posts. Sharing the last of my Year of the Ram goodies today. This fancy little hanging lantern decoration was given to me by none other than my uber talented friend, Lorna to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Lorna created this beautiful hanging lantern by joining several Chinese red envelopes (li see, lai see, or hongbao) together at their corners...so COOL, eh? Awww...and isn't that tiny little ram bell charm hanging from it the CUTEST thing ever?

The lantern ornament hangs from a hook made from a heavy gauge jewelry wire which extends from a "stand", filled with a fortune cookie and other sweet treats. So clever! The adorable little rams on the front is also a red envelope which Lorna adhered to the stand. Another amazing and creative original from my sweet friend!

Here's yet another Year of the Sheep inspired gift I received...from none other than my dear mom! Even while laid up in bed after her knee surgery, she spent her time stitching away in between physical therapy sessions. LOL, there's no stopping a crafter!

Totally LOVE my new plastic canvas sheep tissue holder! Each of the colorful blossoms on this were individually stitched and sewn on separately for dimension, and she even stitched the year on the top!

And finally, these are the calendar magnets I put together at the very last minute when I realized I had run short of the easel calendars I made earlier. I purchased the calendars for these from Impress Rubber Stamps because their shipping costs were more reasonable than other places. The size of their small and medium calendars are different than the ones from Vippies, but no problem. I actually felt the quality of these were much better.

Using the "2015" cutfile I used previously for my easel calendars and the cute ram image (from daikonko) cutfile I used to decorate my New Years treat bottles, together with a lot of helpful advice from my friend Karen of Have A Scrap Happy Day blog, I was able to put a dozen of these together and in the mail pretty quickly...whew, glad that's all done!
Yay! I think I'm pretty much caught up on the posting of my holiday projects...at least for now!

Cuteness Overload!

Still trying to catch up! St, Patrick's Day was Tuesday, and though I didn't wear green, I got really lucky... My dear friend Kris surprised me with this super adorable bag of goodies!

Aww...isn't this little leprechaun mouse the CUTEST ever?!!! Kris has an amazing talent with paper piecing these little critters, always making them look so irresistibly cute!

Oh, oh...more CUTENESS! This darling card from sweet Patti of Creations by Patti had me squealing with delight! Is that my little Latte on the card? This was a Make and Take ard offered by Avery Elle Stamps at the recent CHA trade show which Patti put together and sent my way 'cause it reminded her of my furbaby. How sweet is that!

 One thing's for certain...I MUST have this stamp!

Lucky,lucky me, to have such very special friends!

Sweet Surprises!

I'm afraid I'm quite behind on my blog postings...but late as this may be, I really wanted to share these sweet surprises I received from my very talented crafty friends for Valentines Day and Girls Day this year. First up...Lorna's super cute Valentines Day packets filled with chocolates.

She used Sister Stamps Miyako stamp, colored with Copics and holding up a washi paper pieced heart to embellish her packet closed with a bow. So adorable!

This beautiful card in a box creation came in the mail from my dear friend, Patti of Creations By Patti blog. Wow, I love how this card in a box looks like it's just bursting open with so many hearts! Even the flaps on the box are heart shaped! Patti chose perfectly coordinating papers and a cutting file from SVG Cuts to make this a very special Valentine.

Then on Girls Day (March 3rd), Lorna blew me away with these incredible kokeshi doll treats! 

Lorna used the Kokeshi Doll Heads stamps to make these doll displays...and  if you look carefully, you can see the packets of wasabi iso peanuts draped with pretty washi paper she used to create their bodies. Yes, this girl is just out of this world creative!

And tucked underneath each of the display stands were these yummy mochi candies...

And finallly, this "OMG SO KAWAII!!!" kimono Hello Kitty packet of treats comes from my dear friend Kris. She embossed her packet with a Cuttlebug embossing folder and paper pieced this adorable Hello Kitty. Love, love all the tiny little details from the pretty bow and flowers in her hair to the little pair of geta on feet.
I'm so blessed to have such wonderfully talented and crafty friends who always spoil me with their amazing creations! Okay, please bear with me as I still have a few more Chinese New Year projects to share on my next post and hopefully I'll be caught up and ready for...Easter!

Girls Day Sakura Petal Boxes

Uh, oh! It's only March, and already I'm slipping behind on all my projects and blog posts...YIKES! I suppose part of the reason is that Valentines Day, Chinese New Year and Girls Day were all less than a week apart this year. That, and me not being able to come up with any creative ideas...I was especially stumped on what to do for Girls Day this year. Then I remembered some cute petal boxes I had seen a while back and recalled wanting to try them as sakura petal boxes. Searching online, I came across a few usable templates, but they were all four petal (square), six petal (hexagon) or eight petal (octogon) boxes. For a sakura, I needed a FIVE petal (pentagon) box. Desperate and running out of time, I finally came to the realization that I'd have to come up with my own template...UGH!

Tracing the template I found for a six petal box into MTC, I removed one of the panels to make it a five sided box, then created a pentagon shape for the box bottom. Ta-Da...it worked!

The individual petals of the sakura were also created in MTC by doing some pixel editing to separate the petals on a sakura image I had previously saved.

Various sized sakura and flower center punches were used to decorate the sides of the box...

and paper pieced kokeshi was created in MTC using a kokeshi head image found online and pairing it with the kokeshi body from Jin's (Under A Cherry Tree blog) freebie Kyoto Kuties cutting file.

Here's what the box looks like when it's open. I was able to finish ten of these just in the nick of time, and filled them with Japanese mochi candies.

Finished them off by bagging in cellophane...

And adding a fun topper.

Girls Day (March 3rd) isn't a major holiday but I always enjoy making a little something to share with friends. Brings back lots of warm memories of my daughter growing up and even of my own childhood.

Chinese New Year Treats

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Based on the traditional lunar calendar, Thursday (February 19) marked the first day of the Chinese New Year and the beginning of Year of the Sheep. Baked up batches of hubby's favorite almond cookies again this year and put together some Year of the Sheep boxes to put them in for giving to friends and family.

I chose to make octagonal boxes again this year to hold my cookies, just a little bit different than the ones from last year. Got the freebie cutfile for these from SVG Cuts. I really liked the unusual shape of this box...difficult to tell from my photos, but the bottom half of this box gently flares out to give it a slightly wider base than its top. Also liked the idea of the shadow box type window on the cover...the original box from SVG Cuts comes with a pretty heart shaped window which I swapped out for a lantern shape instead.

Another unique design feature I love on this box is its wide scalloped edge lid.

The lantern shapes for the window were created by welding rectangle and oval shapes in MTC. The cover on this box is four layers thick...a top red cover layer embossed with a folder from Cuttlebug Asian bundle, a shiny gold foil layer for the window frame, the mat gold inset embossed with a plum blossom folder also from the Cuttlebug Asian bundle, and finally the slightly larger black cardstock layer which peeks out from the edges as a border. 

I chose a Chinese papercut style design for my sheep and added the character for "sheep". I'm always intrigued by the intricacy and details on Chinese papercuts and was thrilled to find an image that could be easily rendered into a cutfile and cut on my Silhouette machine.
An interesting and amusing thing I came across while searching the web for inspiration for my cookie box this year...the Chinese character and word "yang" apparently refers to any member of the sheep genre, which explains why many of the Chinese zodiac images for this year look more like "goats" than sheep. Many refer to this year as being the "Year of the Goat". I thought this was especially funny since  earlier I had mentioned how hubby (who was born in the Year of the Sheep)  was so insistent that this was the Year of the RAM", not "sheep". LOL, wonder how he would feel about being called just an "OLD GOAT"?!!!

Special Delivery Valentines

Happy, Happy Valentines Day! This year I made these fun post office drop box type mailboxes to help me share the love with special friends and family. The svg cutfile for these adorable boxes were designed by the super talented Mary Kowal, and may be purchased at her site, SVG Cuts. Love that all the pieces needed put this project together cut so clean, and that assembly video tutorials are provided for every project.

I used Bazzill Bling Feather Boa for the mailbox bases and some fun heart patterned cardstock from MMBI to decorate the front door and side inset panels. The round medallions on the side panels were designed using Calibiri and Armonioso fonts in Microsoft Word and cut out with circle punches.

On the front door, I added a paper pieced teddy from the "SWAK" file from Designs On Cloud 9. Thought he looked so cute peeking out of his little envelope filled with hearts!

Then a "Special Delivery" banner with scalloped heart and flower accents were created in Make the Cut and added to the top of the mailbox.

The finished size of this is quite large, 6-1/2" tall, 5" wide, 3-3/4" deep...but what I loved most about this is how the door on the front drops down so you can fill these up with lots of goodies! I baked up a couple batches of Cranberry Shortbread cookies (recipe from Craisins website) and filled each mailbox with over a dozen cookies with still lots of room to spare. Unfortunately, with the day for Chinese New Years falling so close to Valentines Day this year, I only had time enough to make ten of these...so much fun to put together but a little time consuming...darned, wish I had gotten started earlier!
Hope everyone is having a wonderful time celebrating the love this weekend!

"Whale-Come" Baby!

Here's a card I recently made to celebrate the birth of a co-worker's grandson. Before he was born I found out that his nursery was being decorated with a nautical theme so I tried to keep with the theme for his card.I was happy to learn that baby's name was "LOGAN"... a five-letter name, which meant I could use the same building blocks card template I had created for the last baby card I made again...yay!

On the front of the card, I used the cute whale cut from Cricut's B is for Boy cartridge together with a sailboat cut created in MTC from an image found on the web. Scallop edge borders to simulate waves were created in MTC as well. I used adhesive foam squares to pop the layers of "waves" to try to create the look of different depths of water for the sailboat and whale. Background cardstock was embossed using Sizzix Stars and Swirls folder.

This is what the Building Blocks card looked like on the inside. Busted out my old Quickutz dies to decorate the inside of this card....Mini Blossom font die for the alphas on the blocks and 2x2 dies for the dolphins.

Here's the view from the top. As you can see, I completely snipped away the thin cardstock pieces between the blocks (which normally fold towards the back of the blocks) and replaced them with a single solid piece of cardstock in blue in hopes to make the card a little bit more durable.

I won't lie and say this was an easy card for me...LOL...anytime I have to take out my exacto knife and ruler to make a card you can bet I struggled! But I did have fun with the decorating and maybe if I do this a few more times, I'll eventually get the hang of it?