Girls Night Out

Earlier this month, a group of us who were best friends during our teenage years in middle/high school got together for a Girls Night Out. Some of us hadn't seen each other for thirty years or more so it was an evening of reminiscing and fun.

I filled half a dozen take out boxes with some homemade Crispix party mix and dressed them up with a frou frou tulle bow and fun shaker tag to share with the girls.

I chose to use a digital stamp, "Back To School Party" from the Tiddly Inks collection... appropriately named, don't you think? Colored the image with Copics and fussy cut it to fit onto the 3 inch round tag. A little hard to see in the photos but the sentiment inside the tag reads "Friends since Hanabata Days"... (a  little Hawaiian Pidgin English slang referring to being friends from when we were very young). This was the first time I used adhesive backed craft foam sheets run through my Big Shot with Spellbinders Round Nestabilities dies to create shaker tags. Found this to be much easier than trying to piece together strips of foam tape!

Flying Tsuru Wiper Card

I decided to make my dear friend Lorna a Wiper style card for her birthday, mostly because I felt I wanted to get more practice putting this type of card together. I kept the embellishing simple by adhering washi paper to the shorter front panel and attaching an Asian scenic border cut using Amy Design's "Chinese Landscape" die.

As the card is pulled open,

... a crane rises up from behind the pagoda. I attached a strip of clear acetate to the mechanism so it would appear that the crane was flying. Hard to believe but the mechanism that creates all the fun movement is just a strip of folded cardstock attached to a corner behind the front panel. A search for "Wiper Card" on You Tube brings up many good tutorials on how to create this card but I took the easy way out and purchased a cutting file for one of the many cute wiper cards from the Lori Whitlock Store instead. The wiper mechanism is "generic" so the card can be customized as you please.

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.

Happy Hina Matsuri!

In celebration of "Hina Matsuri" or Girls Day I put together ten of these bento box holders which were inspired by lunch/treat bags designed by Debi of Crafty Buzz blog. Unfortunately I don't own the Papertrey Ink die Debi used to create her treat bag; and since I needed my holders to be wider to accomodate the bento boxes, I created a cut file for it in Make the Cut Design studio.

The paper pieced kokeshi doll was inspired by an image on Pinterest.  Make the Cut rendered it into a cutting file and I used Copic markers and a white gel pen to decorate her kimono. Tiny cherry blossoms in her hair are from a Punch Bunch Mini paper punch. I placed a border of washi paper backed with glitter paper behind the kokeshi and added an oval cut label with my girls day sentiment.

Here's a view of the holder from the side and another view with the flaps/handles down. I used a sakura digital paper file purchased from  Graphic Design By Mia on Etsy and printed it out on plain white cardstock for the box.

The mochi I made was packed into mini aluminum bento boxes and placed into the sakura printed boxes.

And this is the Girls Day card I made to send to our granddaughter...

I used Karen Burniston's Spinner Square Pop Up die again to create another fun interactive card. As the card is opened, the square panel in the window pops up and the "spinner" mechanism behind it brings down the birds and the sentiment. I attached clear acetate to the spinner mechanism so the little birds would appear to be "flying out" from behind the square.

Stamped image is little "Misaki" from Sister Stamps. Used copics to color her and washi paper to paper piece her kimono.

Pokemon GO! {We Choose YOU!}

When I  discovered that my son in law enjoys playing the Pokemon Go! game, my immediate reaction was, "Yaas! He's getting a Pokemon card for his birthday!" Wanted it to be an interactive card so I decided to do another Spinner Square Pop Up card using Karen Burniston's die.

As the card is opened, the panel that shows through the window on the front of the card pops forward, and a "spinning" arm makes Pikachu, together with a Pokeball and the sentiment appear from behind it. Very cool!

For the Pokemon, I chose to put together paper piecings of Squirtle, Charmander, and of course Pikachu using SVG cutting files purchased on Etsy.

Then, inspired by a free printable Pikachu Valentine card designed and shared by Paula Biggs, I created a similarly styled Pikachu gift card holder to go with the Pokemon card. Always kind of fun when I can get everything to tie in to the same theme.

Panda Hugs and Unicorn Sparkles

Happy Happy Valentine's Day! Made ten of these simple panda boxes and filled them with freshly baked Lemon Chip cookies for my "Galentines" this year.

The kawaii panda is a clipart image from the Cute Pandas Vector Clip Art set created by "Look Look Pretty Paper" on Etsy.  Make the Cut design program was used to render him into a paper piecing cutting file to fit onto the front of my cooky box.

The cooky box design was inspired by the boxes that the new Diamond Head Bakery shortbread cookies come packaged in. Their shortbread is yummy, but even better, I thought their hinged lid boxes were very cool and wanted to do something similar for my cooky box. I tried to create a template in Make the Cut by welding together basic shapes (square, triangles), but ended up having to simplify the fancy folded hinged lid.

I also designed my boxes to be a smidge larger so I could get a dozen cookies to fit inside. Glued panda's body to the base of the box and attached his head to the hinged lid with some foam tape.

As a final touch, I added a Valentine sentiment and a few glittery hearts to the back and tied a ribbon around the box.

Made only one Valentine card this year...a Unicorn themed Valentine for our dear granddaughter. I'm starting to think that I now like Unicorns just as much (or maybe even more) as pandas! Lol, we've already bought our granddaughter a Unicorn rocking horse, Unicorn blankets, Unicorn hoodies, Unicorn t shirts, Unicorn plushies ... I'm guessing it won't be long before her momma says "ENOUGH!"

But these cutie patootie paper pieced Unicorns were just too hard to resist! They are from the "Chibi Unicorns" set of cutting files from SVG Cutting Files. I decided to put them on a "Wiper Card".

Have you noticed the revival of the old "Wiper Card" style with a fresh new look on stamp and cardmaking sites recently? The new revised wiper cards now have a shorter front panel so that stamped or paper pieced images can pop out from behind them. For this card, pulling on the right and left sides of the card "opens" it,  and a third Unicorn "leaps" out from behind the clouds!
I purchased the template cutting file for the "Wiper Card" from the Lori Whitlock Shop and embellished it with a rainbow, clouds and Unicorns. I also attached a piece of clear acetate to the wiper mechanism for the center unicorn so she would appear to be leaping out of the clouds.

Lots of room on the backside of the card to add a sweet sentiment. Hope our granddaughter enjoys this interactive card as much as I had fun learning to put it together. Lots of fun possibilities come to mind for this card, and I'm looking forward to playing around with this !

Happy New Year of the Boar

Please pardon me as I struggle to catch up on my New Year blog posts! I'll be sharing my New Years projects from January in this post so I can get back on schedule and hopefully share my Valentines Day projects later this week.

These are the Year of the Boar refrigerator magnet calendars I put together for sharing with family and friends this year.

I also made several of these New Year cards with a fan window cut out. A strip of washi paper was adhered to the inside of the card so it would peek thru the window.

Inside, I added a  kawaii paper pieced boar above the strip of washi paper. I was all set to mail out several of these cards together with calendars until I went to the post office and found out it was going to cost me $3.55 to mail each set! I bit the bullet and mailed about half of them, and then while I debated about  mailing the rest, a few days later the postage rates went up! Are you kidding me?!!!(Sorry, I just HAD to VENT!)

And finally, I put together these Year of the Boar tags for a little over a  dozen take out boxes filled with Chex Mix to pass out to family at our New Years Day family reunion.

"Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!"