Crowing In with the Year Of The Rooster

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy New Year! Seems I have been MIA for 2 months from my blog, but I think I can safely say that I am finally nearly caught up with life now and can comfortably resume posting again. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Mine was a bit hectic, but I survived and it's all good.Today is Chinese New Years and it feels good to start off the New Year with a new blog post. For those who might be interested, I have decided to post all my Christmas and holiday projects from 2016 retroactively. I'm thinking no one will want to see Christmas stuff this late into January, but since I still want to post them for my own personal reference, I'll be dating those posts for December 2016.

To celebrate the Year of the Rooster, I put together a dozen of these double hinged boxes for sharing the almond cookies I baked with family and friends. For the construction of the box, I used the basic instructions on Crafty Caroline's You Tube tutorial found here. but increased the size of the box to 5 x 6"  with a depth of 1-1/2" so it would hold a dozen small almond cookies. What I liked most about Caroline's box is how she cut away part of the lids on the top and bottom sides to give it a nice angled design.
The stylized rooster icon and Chinese character were found on the web and rendered into cut files using Make the Cut. Shadows and octagonal shapes were also created in Make the Cut. Rooster was cut from gold foil board and I used the Mystic Clouds embossing folder by mpress to add texture to the first octogonal layer.Oriental design corners were cut using wikiCAPS Asian Designs metal die.

The double hinged box opens from the center...

...and the hinged lids fall to the sides of the box.

Wrapped the boxes in cellophane bags tied with red and gold ribbons to finish. 

Also want to share this super cute Year of the Rooster candy holder created by none other than my dear friend Lorna. Isn't this just too adorable? Lorna made her treat box to look like a Japanese Daruma doll and added a rooster face with a "matsu" or Japanese pine icon for his comb. Cute, cute, CUTE!

Here's a view of the box attached to the daruma and the New Year's greeting stamped (Mama Elephant Lunar Extras) and embossed on the back of the box. 

And here's my furbaby Latte joining me to wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous New Year in 2017! (She'll do almost anything for treats...!)

Wrapping It Up

Made several of these polar bear gift card holders for the many gift cards we gave out at Christmas again this year. Finding it so much more enjoyable staying home to put together these card holders than having to deal with going to the mall, struggling to find parking, standing in long lines and fighting the crowds.

These are the same gift card holders I made earlier this year for birthday gifts but this time I just swapped the head out for a polar bear head. Cutting file for the polar bear and his snowflake are from Cuddly Cute Designs. Merry Christmas was cut using an Elizabeth Craft Designs die, and Sizzix Framelits Tag Set was used for the gift tag with our sentiment.

For our very special Mail Lady, I put together this mini holiday mailbox to hold her gift card.

Cutting file for this comes from My ScrapChick, and the simple wreath embellishment on the front is a file from Kadoodle Bug Designs.

Loved these polar bear with snowflake tags from last year so much that I made them again this year.

And I made these polar bear with candy cane tags for those who got the snowflake ones last year, lol. Round tag was cut using Lawn Fawn's "Stitched Circle Tags" die, bear was cut using Cottage Cutz "Santa Bear" die, snowflake is from Die Namics "Let It Snowflake" die, and candy cane is from Little Scraps of Heaven's "Candy Cane Penguin" svg cut file. And I guess that just about wraps it all up for my holiday projects this year! 

Christmas Chex Mix

We decided to go with the same take out boxes we used last Christmas to box up our holiday chex mix again for hubby to share with his coworkers.

Used a cute but simple paper pieced reindeer from My Scrap Chick for my tags and added a punny sentiment inside.

One jarful of snack mix went to the sweet folks at Latte's vet. The paper pieced pup is my favorite "Puppy Love" doggie from Little Scraps of Heaven, and her snowflake is from Cuddly Cute Designs "Polar Bear" file. Cuttlebug's Snowflake folder was used to emboss the round backdrop for puppy.

Holiday Greetings to Friends and Family

Now that the holidays are over, I've come to the realization that I really do need to start working on my Christmas cards much earlier in the year. It took me way too long trying to decide on a design for our card this year so I had a late start and barely finished in time. That left me with almost no time left to do much else creative for the holidays. Such a disappointment since there's always so many neat holiday crafts I wish I had the time to try.

The layout for the card front of our Christmas card this year was inspired by a beautiful card created by Lin,  posted on her Sending Hugs . For our card, I used the Cuttlebug Snowflakes embossing folder to add texture, and snowflakes were cut using Die-namics' Let it Snowflake die.

I loved Lin's idea of using a Polaroid type frame; it was perfect for adding a photo we had taken of our furbaby Latte with our outdoor Christmas lights display in front of our home.The original photo was cropped in Photoshop and placed in a faux Polaroid frame shared by Megan on The Nerd Nest blog. The frame is a free download and Megan includes a tutorial to make it all easy.

On the inside, the card opens to my favorite Pop Up Accordion Panel card.

 Added a photo of us from our Hokkaido vacation on the inside, and tried to keep the embellishing to a minimum with just the snowflakes...but even then assembling 80 of these did take longer than I had expected! Thank goodness hubby helped with much of the scoring and die cutting!

And finally, here's a side view showing the V-fold mechanism that creates the fun pop up movement on this card. There are quite a few tutorials with free templates available on the web for this type of card, just search for "Pop Up Panel Card". 

Turkey Treats and Birthday Surprises

I'm sorry to say I've been MIA on my blog lately due to me struggling to finish our Christmas cards. I think I bit off more than I could chew when I chose a design for my cards this year...funny how making one card always seems simple enough but having to do multiples always takes so much longer. Anyway, I'm taking a break from that to share these little turkey treat holders my sweet friend Lorna made for us at work before Thanksgiving. Aren't they just absolutely adorable?

The body of these turkeys is a piece of cardstock scored and adhered at the top to create a tent shape to hold little chocolates inside. I think Lorna used a flower shaped cutting file for the tail feathers and circle punches for the fun cute eyes, a triangle for the beak and a teardrop punch for the wattle. Isn't it amazing how Lorna manages to make clean and simple look so darned cute? Love it!

Then to my surprise and delight, a few days after Thanksgiving, my dear friend Kris delivered these goodies for my birthday!

Isn't this paper pieced teddy with his honey jar that Kris used to decorate the gift bag just adorable?

And goodness, how kawaii is this Pochacco birthday card? 

But wait...we all know how talented Kris is with creating the best moving and interactive cards, right? So watch what happens when you pull on the little tab on the right side of the card...

Pulling on the tab makes Pochacco roll down the street on his skate board while something starts to unfold from inside the card...

Whoa! How cool is that! How did she do that!

Haven't had the time to sit and figure this one out yet...but I'm hoping Kris will teach me how she does this super fun interactive card!

And this is the little carnation Latte look a like who visited me at work again this year with loving birthday wishes from hubby and Latte!

Okay, gotta get back to working on my holiday cards and projects... I may not have a chance to post again till next year, so here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. See 'ya in 2017!

Sweet As Hunny

It seems that reminiscing about our trip to Disneyland last year has put me in the Disney mood... just noticed that many of the cards I've made recently feature Disney characters... including this one I sent to my daughter for her birthday. Pooh Bear was always a big favorite at our home while she was growing up so I thought I would use him on her card to rekindle some of the warm and fuzzy feelings we all shared.

I found a coloring book image of Pooh Bear I liked and created him into a cut file using Make the Cut for the front of my card. All the pieces were cut on my Silhouette, then colored with Copic pens. Paper pieced butterfly and tufts of grass are from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Decided to do one of my new favorite fun cards...the Pop Up {Accordion} Panel style card. I always get such a kick out of watching this card open!

There are quite a few tutorials for this type of card on the web recently. Just do a search for "Pop Up Panel Card" and choose the one that suits you the best. I used a video tutorial on You Tube by Kevin Devine found here.

For my card, I changed the accordion panels to heart shaped ones by welding heart shapes together in Make the Cut. Make the Cut was also used, together with Comic Sans font to create the lettering for the sentiment on the panels. Cute bumble bees and hunny jar are from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Paper pieced Pooh and Piglet on the inside of the card are also from Cricut Pooh and Friends cartridge.

Had such fun putting this card together, all the time recalling many fond memories of my daughter's childhood growing up with Pooh and his friends. Hoping this card will strike the same note in my daughter's heart too!

On Track for a Fabulous Birthday

Last year when my daughter and son in law took hubby and I to Disney's California Adventure Park to celebrate our birthdays, I found out that my son in law is a huge fan of the movie Cars. So when it was time to make his birthday card this year, I knew it had to be with a Cars theme. Had so much fun learning to make the Z-fold Pop Up card for hubby's birthday last month that I wanted to give it another try.

Here's what the  z-fold card looks like when it's opened.

A view from the top shows where struts were added inside the z-fold similar to the struts in a pop up box style card.

Here's paper pieced Lightning Mcqueen...

...and my son in law's favorite Mater.

Unfortunately I don't own the Cricut Cars cartridge, but happily, I found svg cutting files for the Disney Cars characters for sale on Etsy. The cutting files I purchased came from seller Clipartoon. The Disney Cars bundle included 30 cutting files for about $7, which I thought was a bargain considering the many many hours it would have taken me to make my own cutting files. From now on, I'll definitely have to remember to include Etsy in my searches for cutting files! 

To complete the scene of Radiator Springs' Ornament Valley, cutting files for the Cadillac Mountain range and the hood ornament rock formation were created in Make the Cut using some of my free hand drawings. The cactus is a cutting file from Miss Kate's Cuttables. Had tons of fun putting this card together, tho once again it took me quite a while to figure out how to put together the whole "scene". Looking forward to trying this card style again, and hopefully it will start to get easier each time.