Panda Thank You's

Quick post today to share my very belated thank you cards that I'm actually still in the midst of finishing...

Stamped and colored panda is from Mama Elephant's Incoming Mail stamp set. And the layout design for the card was inspired by a super cute card by Christina of Bubblegum Paper blog.

Christina used the Mama Elephant script die to cut a negative on the front of her card, but since I don't own that die, I tried to improvise by creating a cut file using Ballerina font and having my Silhouette cut it on the front of the card. As you can tell from the photo, it did not cut as clean and perfect as you would get from a metal die.

Although I wasn't entirely happy with how my cards turned out, they were pretty much quick to put together so that was good enough for this time. Anxious to give this card design another try soon when I'm not in such a hurry...and hopefully then I'll be happier with the result!

Sweet Valentines

Happy Valentines Day! I made heart shaped cookie boxes this year and filled them with sugar cookies to share with family and friends.

The front of the boxes were decorated with paper pieced images of My Melody using cutfiles created in Make the Cut design program.

The Happy Valentines Day sentiment was die cut using a metal die from Mama Elephant, and the colorful hearts background paper is a digital file purchased from Bella Blvd.

Here are the side and back views of the box. The box is actually my copy cat version of the Valentines Lindor truffle box from Lindt Chocolates which I created in Make the Cut by welding basic shapes together. The size of this box is approximately 8 inches high and wide with a depth of about 2 inches; large enough to hold half a dozen medium size cookies.

After putting together a dozen of the My Melody cookie boxes, I realized I needed something less girly for my son in law...so I decorated  his box with a paper pieced Pochacco.

Had so much fun with little Pochacco and since I still had a bit more time, I decided to make half a dozen more...but this time in a smaller size to fill with chocolates to share with friends at work.

The size of this smaller box is about 6 inches wide and high with a depth of 1-1/2 inches. Especially nice since it only took one sheet of 12 x 12 cardstock to make each box. To save time and make these more quickly, I did a print and cut instead of a paper piecing of  Pochacco for the smaller boxes. The "Love" sentiment was cut using a die from Elizabeth Craft Designs, and I used another digital file from Bella Blvd for the heart panel.

These sweet little Dove chocolate heart holders are from dear Lorna. The adorable little teddy is a stamped image from Dandelion Designs, and though it's hard to see in the photo, his little hands are curved to hold the chocolate heart...too cute!!!

Talk about cute...how about these little Hershey kiss-y mice that were brought in for us at work by a very creative customer! Love those googly eyes!
Hope everyone had a fun Valentines Day today sharing the love!

Welcoming In the New Year 2017

Here are the Year of the Rooster magnetic calendars I put together this year for sharing with family and friends. In past years I've usually had at least half of my calendars done in time for donating to the Senior Citizen Craft Fair which is held in the fall, but I unfortunately I just wasn't able to get these started until after Christmas this year. Ugh! My lack of time management skills is showing again. Luckily, I was able to crank out three dozen of these just in time for New Years...whew!

Using the Make the Cut program made designing my calendars quick and easy. Arial font was used for the year and I chose a very simple design for a rooster so it wouldn't take too long to piece together. Mini calendars were purchased online from Impress Rubber Stamps. On the backside I added Darice adhesive magnet strips and backed them with foam tape for stability. Red sakura patterned paper is from the Cherry Delight collection from My Little Shoe Box.

To go with the calendars, I baked a few batches of Oriental Crispix cereal snack mix, and boxed them in take out boxes tagged with these Year of the Rooster tags. Isn't this little rooster adorable? I found him (together with many more Fluff Friends) posted here. I used Make the Cut to render him into a cutting file and used Lawn Fawn's Stitched Circle Tags die to cut a tag to put him on.

Both "Year of the Rooster" and the back sentiment on the tags were computer generated in Microsoft Word and cut into circles to fit the tags using the print and cut function on the Silhouette and Make the Cut.

Then for a very special aunt, I made another double hinged box, this time decorated with washi paper and a stamped and colored Sister Stamps image, "Pounding Mochi" to hold a gift card.

On the inside I placed a pop up insert to nicely hold the gift card in place. Video tutorial by Crafty Caroline for the double hinged box can be seen here, and the template for the gift card insert comes from the Holiday Cheer Box Collection at SVG Attic.

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".