Joy to You and Yours

...and best wishes for health and happiness

in 2012!

Christmas Boxes

Oh, you just have to love Pinterest! Where else can you store all of your ideas and inspiration without adding to the clutter on your desk? I found the tutorial for these little gift boxes on Jillibean Soup's blog, saved it to my Gift Wrap board on Pinterest and knew exactly where to find the instructions when I started to wrap my presents! So, here's the gift boxes I made:

Just a note on dimensions. I cut the paper for the bottom of the box to measure 7x7 as stated in the instructions. However when I cut the lid as a 5x5 and scored as instructed, it did not fit as snugly as I wanted so I cut a new piece to measure 4 5/8" x 4 5/8" and scored at the 3/4 inch mark. The result was much better! As you can see, I was able to make two boxes from the two coordinating sheets of patterned paper.

To decorate the boxes, I cut a belly band 3/4" wide and added two punched snowflakes (the top one adhered with pop dots) that were adorned with rhinestone stickers. My nieces loved their Christmas presents -- inside and out!

Supplies:

Patterned Paper: SEI Winter (Winter Song; Blaze Velvet);

Tools: Martha Stewart (Scoring Board; Nordic Snowflake punch; Icelandic Snowflake punch);

Embellishments; Recollections rhinestone stickers

Noel Tag

Whew! Is it the end of December already? I feel like this month has really flown by as evidenced by my absence here on the blog. Between Christmas preparations, a nasty upper respiratory infection, taking my mother to physical therapy, shopping, making my Christmas cards and a broken washing machine, I feel like my excuses for not being here could fill Santa's sleigh. Luckily, I was a little crafty this month and even worked on a December Daily for the first time. These are all projects I will be sharing with you over the next week or so.

Today, I want to share my folded Christmas tags. They were inspired by this challenge at Papertrey Ink. Here is my tag:

I started with the Papertrey Ink's Mat Stack 3 die. I added a strip of velvet paper which was left over from my Christmas cards I stamped a label using PTI's Label Basics, added the sentiment and brad and adhered it to the tag using pop dots. The snowflake was something I had in my stash. I bought a pack of four last year at Michael's for $1. Now, I wish I had bought more!

Supplies:

Cardstock base: Georgia Pacific;

Patterned Paper: K & Company;

Tools: Papertrey Ink dies (Mat Stack 3; Label Basics);

Stamps: Papertrey Ink (Label Basics; Think Big Favorites 8);

Ink: Stampin' Up! (Riding Hood Red); Memento (Black);

Embellishments: Snowflakes (Michael's); Brads (Anna Griffin)

It's In The Bag!

Remember this post from last year? Well, the holiday shopping bags are out so I thought I would challenge myself, once again, to use one as the basis of a card. So, here's the bag:

As luck would have it, this week's challenge at Our Creative Corner was to make a project with a Christmas tree. Here's my card:

To create it, I stamped my tree onto the shopping bag and cut it out. To give it more definition, I ran the edges along my black ink pad. I also stamped my tree onto my card base since I was only popping the top. For the background, I used Versa Mark ink to stamp the snow line and ran over it with some liquid glue so that the glitter would stick. Next, I spritzed the card with some Mister Huey in Calico White. Finally, I sprayed some Mister Huey Calico Shine over the entire background before adding the tree and the ribbon.

It's so hard to photograph the shimmer on this card but hopefully the photo below gives you an idea of why I love Calico White and Calico Shine!

If you are inspired to make a card from a shopping bag, please link it up to my blog in the comment section. I would love to see them!

Supplies:

Cardstock: Papertrey Ink (Stamper's Select White);

Stamps: Hero Arts (Merriest Wishes);

Ink: Ranger (Jet Black); Versa Mark; Studio Calico Mister Huey (Calico White; Calico Shine);

Embellishments: Recollections Rhinestones (Red); Martha Stewart Glitter (Crystal Coarse); Making Memories Ribbon;

Misc.: Bath & Body Works shopping bag.