What Happened to December?

WHOA!!!! It's a NEW YEAR already and looks like I was left in the dust! I guess it may have seemed that I fell off the face of the blogging world, but only because I was struggling to keep up with the holidays. As a result I'm embarrassingly late in posting my holiday projects... I hope you'll bear with me for my next few posts as I scramble to try to catch up.

Every Christmas we make batches of Chex mix for hubby to share with his co-workers. In the past we've given them in plastic jars I've decorated, but lately it's gotten more difficult to find the jars on sale so we opted to do something different this time. Picked up these cute take out boxes at a local restaurant wholesale supplier and decided to give these a try.

Kept it simple by tying on a big bow with some wide grosgrain ribbon and adding a homemade Santa tag. Cutting file for the Santa comes from My Scrap Chick. This came together much quicker than decorating jars, and so much easier to carry to work. Definitely will do this again next Christmas.

And here's Latte's gifts to her friends...a jar of people treats for her sweet friends at the pet clinic, and goodie bags filled with doggie treats for her canine pals.

For these, I used my favorite furry puppy from Little Scraps of Heaven's "Puppy Love" cutting file together with the holly border from Kadoodle Bug Designs' "Holly Bear" file.

Here a few of the tags I put together for our gifts. Used metal dies for these. Snowflakes dies are from Die-namics "Let It Snowflake"; peeking teddy is from Cottage Cutz "Peeking Santa Bear", and round tag from Lawn Fawn "Stitched Circle Tags". Had fun making these...wish I had time to do more!

And finally, the holiday cards we sent out. Started working on these in November but ran into printer problems which set me back and ended up taking way too long to finish. Photo on the front of the card is our sweet furbaby Latte wearing a string of battery powered fairy lights Used Sizzix "Stars and Swirls" embossing folder for the white panel backed with silver metallic cardstock from Hygloss. Ornaments were die cut using Memory Box "Classic Ornament" die, strung with silver metallic cording.

On the inside, a simple accordion flag pop up style card inspired by a holiday card by my friend Patti of  Creations By Patti blog a few years back. Tutorial for Patti's card can be found here.

I used photos taken during a recent Disneyland vacation for my "flags", increasing the dimensions of the card slightly to accommodate the width of the photos. With hubby's help scoring the cards and with backing the photos, we were able to get 80 of these in the mail just in time.
Okay, on my next post I'll be sharing some of the fun gift card holders I put together for holiday giving. Hope you'll stay tuned!

Birthday Surprises

Another short post today to share a few of the sweet surprises I received for my birthday this year. This is the amazing card I received from my bestest crafting buddy Kris. Without question, this has to be CUTEST Tsum Tsum card ever!

And of course, being from Kris, this had to be another fun interactive card. We've all seen those neat cards that look like smartphones and iphones...but this is the first time I've seen a phone card with a game on it...so CLEVER!!! Kris made this adorable card even more special by making it into a Penny Spinner card. If you look very closely, you can detect the curvy track for the spinner. It's hard to see because the backing panel is printed with an image identical to the front panel and Kris took the time to perfectly align the images. See how the Mickey Tsum spins along the track to the bottom? SUPER COOL!!!

Mmmmm!!! Don't these cranberry scones look scrumptious? Let me tell you, they are! My dear friend Heather baked these sweet yummies for my birthday...lucky me! You know how scones are usually dry and crumbly? Not these! Move over, Starbucks! Heather's scones are my absolute favorite...moist, buttery, melt in your mouth deliciousness!

Then to make my special day even more special, my little Latte came to visit me at work again this year for my birthday! Awww....I always love getting these adorable puppy bouquets from hubby!

Happy Pumpkin Pie Day

OMG, OMG...can you believe it? The holiday season has already begun... and as you might guess from this late post, I'm struggling to keep up!
Nice to know that at least one of my friends is organized and on the ball...my dear sweet friend Lorna brought this beautiful and amazing pumpkin pie creation to our workplace last week just before Thanksgiving. I thought it was so clever how she put it in a plastic take out box to deliver. Oops! Sorry, looks like someone grabbed their piece of pie before I could even snap a picture of the whole pie.

Here's a shot of an individual slice of pie. Each slice is a wedge shaped box, filled with treats! I love how she added strips of brown cardstock to the bottom of the box and a scallop edged piece of cardstock to the lid to resemble the crust. The sweet paper rose reminds me of whipped cream, and the swirly embossing really makes this look so yummy! And the little banner on top of each slice of pie reads "happy pumpkin pie day"....awww....how adorable is that!

Hope that everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving spent with family and loved ones this year. I am thankful and truly blessed to be surrounded by dear friends and family who have always given their loving care, support and thoughtfulness throughout the years.

Life With You Is Still SO Sweet!

Hubby and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary last month and this is the card I put together for him.There's an ongoing joke around our home that he's the "Smoothie King" because he blends together the absolutely yummiest smoothies for us every weekend... acai, strawberries, bananas, pineapple, yogurt and kale...mmmm...YUM! He jokingly calls me the "Smoothie Monster" because I can slurp up those delicious smoothies he makes in no time flat. Even before he has a chance to sit down to enjoy his own drink, I'm already half way done with mine and begging for more!

So naturally, when I spied this adorable "Sweet Smoothie" cutting file over at Marjorie Ann Designs, I knew it would be perfect! All the paper piecings were cut on my Silhouette from white cardstock and colored using Copic pens. I used the Cuttlebug "Wicker Weave" embossing folder for the background on my blender mouse.

I decided to try another slider style card; this one is called a "Peek A Boo Slider". Found a very detailed and easy to follow photo tutorial for this shared by Norma on her blog, From My Craftroom. If you do a search on her blog, you'll find many of the beautiful Peek A Boo style cards Norma has created...so inspiring! In addition you can find her video tutorial for this card over at Splitcoast Stampers

As this card is opened, a panel with a new image slides over the first image seen in the window to replace it...neat!

And here's the card fully open with the new image... mousies slurping up their smoothie!

Just love these cute mousies from Marjorie Ann Designs! See the mousie on the bottom with the pinked cheeks and eyelashes? That's me!

A word about the mechanics about this card...as with most slider type cards, this Peek A Boo Slider card works best using flat images that are printed or stamped onto the sliding panels. Layered paper pieced images like the ones I've used here tend to get caught onto the sliding mechanisms making it difficult for the card to open and close smoothly. For this card I did a fix by first, adding 2 layers of adhesive foam on the top and bottom edges behind the inside panel. This prevents the paper pieced images from getting snagged onto the edges of the window by allowing the panel to slide about 1/8th inch away. Next, I added a 1/4th inch spine to the slider piece and the back panel (indicated by the red arrows) to accommodate the extra thickness from adding the foam. And lastly, I added a tab (blue arrow) to hold the inside and back panels together to keep the sliding mechanism in place. Took a bit of extra work, but this made a huge difference on how well this card opened and closed. Now that I've finally figured out a solution, I think I may be doing more of these fun slider cards again!

Star Wars Mania Awakens

I think I've mentioned before how I go a little crazy every October with so much stuff going on...hubby. my daughter, and my son in law's birthdays, as well as our wedding anniversary. This year I decided to cheat a little. Since hubby and my son in law's birthdays are only a few days apart... and since thinking up new guy cards makes me stress... and since they're both Star Wars geeks... and since I figured they wouldn't really mind... they both got cards that looked the same on the front.
With all the anticipation and excitement of the new movie being released in December, I thought it would be fun to do a Star Wars themed card.

For the front of the card, I knew I wanted to try to and recreate something similar to the signature scrolling text effect seen at the opening of all Star Wars films. Seemed like it would be a simple enough thing to do, but I soon learned otherwise. The few tutorials I found on the web explaining how to achieve this effect on paper were way too technical for my pea brain (angling each line of text by x degrees and sizing by x points...). In the end, I decided to just place my text into a trapezoid shape, sizing and angling each line to my own liking. Spent way too much time doing this. Not perfect, but good enough for me.
I then used MTC to make a cutfile of this, had my Silhouette cut a stencil onto black cardstock and backed it with some shimmery white cardstock. Found images of the TIE fighter and AT-AT robot online and created cutfiles for those as well.

Now for the FUN part! Inspired by a  wonderful Halloween card created by my dear friend Kris (which I promise to share in a later post), I decided to do a version of Jan Tinklenberg's "Marvelous Magical Marquee Card" on the inside. Unfortunately, still photos can't capture the full very cool sliding effect of this card as it's opened. If you haven't seen this card in action, you definitely should stop in over at Jan's blog, Stamps Paper Scissors to see how this card slides as well as a video tutorial for it.

As this card for my son in law is opened, the "iris" covering the round window slides open to reveal everyone's favorite villain, Darth Vader..."MUAH HA HA HA!"

"30 YEARS OF AGE YOU ARE. WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE..."

Found the link to this very cool free svg for Darth on Pinterest here.

Interactive sliding cards are always fun to make, but most of the time they are designed to work best with flat stamped images, and not so much with layered paper pieced images. Often I find the sliding mechanisms tend to get snagged or caught onto paper piecings, hindering the slider from working smoothly. For this particular card, I remedied the problem by adding two layers of foam tape onto the background around the image. This kept the slider about 1/8" above the image and the waxy backing layer of the foam tape provided a smooth surface for it to slide open and closed without getting caught.

And here's the inside to hubby's card...

As the card is opened, the iris lens parts to reveal little Yoda...

Got the cutting file for Yoda from the "Galaxy Friends" set over at Cuddly Cute Designs.

Pretty much happy about how these birthday cards for the guys turned out. Even happier still that I saved myself a whole lot of stress by making two cards that were similar, but still different enough for my two favorite guys!

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet!

It's here! Halloween, that is. Made some fun little cauldron treat holders for giving out this year... but unfortunately I only had time to make half a dozen of these. We just got home from vacation and  I really had to scramble to put something together for Halloween. Thank goodness these were pretty quick to do!

Got the cutting file for the cauldron template from  the Feeling Lucky kit from SVGCuts. It's originally intended to be a "Pot of Gold" treat holder for St. Patrick's Day, but designer/creator Mary Rudakas suggested it would work as a cauldron for Halloween too. So that's what I did! Just did a little tweaking... The original pot was easy to assemble but looked just a bit too "blocky" for my liking so I added a petal layer over it to give my cauldrons a more rounded look. Also enlarged the template to fit onto a 12 x 12 inch cardstock....to make sure I could get those witchy legs to fit inside! The cutting file for those funny witchy legs comes from Miss Kate Cuttables.

Bagged my Halloween cauldrons in cellophane and added a funny topper to finish...

And now...the GOOD STUFF! Look at all the Halloween goodies I scored...LOL, and I didn't even go TRICK or TREATING! 

My sweet and crafty GHOUL-friend Lorna treated me with a bag of handmade goodies! Here's her candy filled spider box created using her candy box punch board. Totally LOVE how she very cleverly hung the smaller spider over the top!

And even more spooky treats from Lorna! These little surprises feature stamps from Dandelion Designs...so adorable the way she added jack-o-lanterns and witches hats, then colored them up in Frankenstein green, adding scars to their faces for Halloween. 

And from my super baker GHOUL-friend, Heather...the CUTEST decorated shortbread mini cookies ever! I know, I know...too CUTE to eat, right? But let me tell you, they're SUPER yummy too!

Last, our furbaby's Halloween costume this year...meet EWOK Latte! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend of spookiness...keep safe and have fun!

Patti's Disney Magic

On a recent visit, my dear friend Patti of Creations By Patti blog presented me with a most fabulous gift...this totally  jaw dropping, AMAZING Disney themed album!

Everything...every single page, from the front cover to the back is meticulously, carefully thought out and put together beautifully! This is the front cover with a very cool Viewmaster reel that actually spins...and a film strip frame to slide in photos to personalize it.

Are you ready for a magical tour of this amazing album? This is the inside cover and the first page of the album with side pockets beautifully embellished with a glittery castle and Mickey head. Don't you just love this Disney themed paper? Each of the tags inside the pockets has room to add photos on the backside.

Here's pages 3 and 4. Page 3 on the left flips up to reveal a pocket with more cool journaling tags. I love that cute camera! Page 4 flips open to the right with another pocket and journaling tags.

Page 4: Another glittered Mickey head, this time used as side pocket; and Page 5: Mickey head on this is a magnetic closure which opens to reveal lots of space for vacation journaling and more photos.

Pages 6 and 7: Two more beautifully decorated pages that flip open to the side with additional pockets and space for special memoirs.

Page 8 on the right is a pocket page; Page 9 is a creative gatefold. The colorful arrow embellishment is another magnetic closure to keep treasures securely inside its pocket.

Page 9: Opens up to layered waterfall style photo pages. Back cover: pocket on the right holds a mouse ear topped tag and flips open with lots of room for vacation memory keeping.

And then...to top it all off....each page in the album is topped with glittered mouse ears...index file folder style! Very, very cool!

I can't even begin to say how touched I was to receive this amazing gift from Patti. All the time and love she invested in creating this work of art shows and is truly appreciated. This special album will most certainly be a treasured keepsake in our family for a very long time.