One more December item

Just a quick addition here...I already posted pictures of these cards and notepads I made as teacher gifts (notepads here), but I wanted to show how I packaged up the card & notepad to give away. I used Papertrey's medium glassine bags, punched a hole on either side and tied the card - in a clear envelope - to the notepad with a ribbon. Fun.

A long overdue post...

So, as you can see, I'm certainly NOT yet at the place in my life where I am able to maintain an active blog where I post regularly...but that's one of my goals for this year!

Back in early to mid December, I went crazy planning a tea party birthday for Natasha. Since we had the party at a tea room, I didn't have to purchase party decorations, plates, utensils, etc. Sooo, since I had relieved myself of that expense & obligation, I decided to saddle myself with the herculean task of creating all handmade favor bags! It was actually a ton of fun, but very time consuming. I'm so glad that I had my grandma here to help, or it wouldn't have all gotten done!

I tried my hand at shaped candy making with molds for the first time. I LOVED it! All the candies we made turned out so cute, and perfect for the celebration they were for. On top of that, I got to create fun & pretty packaging for the candies with my paper crafting supplies. I had a total blast, and was thrilled with how everything turned out. Below are the pictures, posted FINALLY after almost a month has gone by!

December 16, class birthday party favors - Happy Birthday candy lollipops


December 17, class Christmas party stocking stuffers - a variety of little Christmas shaped candies. I used the Papertrey stamp set, Just For You, to make the little label stickers for the bags.



December 18, finally the BIRTHDAY PARTY!! At Attic Secrets Tea Room. Here are the favor bag photos:
Outside of bag - stamped with a Stampin' Up stamp around wheel (borders) and then the little tea cup and tag are from a Papertrey set, Tea Time Additions. The name tag was cut with my Cricut Expression.

I included a little bracelet making set, and packaged it in a small glassine bag, with the outer tag also stamped with the Just For You Papertrey set. ( I LOVE this set! It has so many stamps to make packaging for a huge variety of handmade gifts)

Adorable little teacup/teapot lollipops also included in the favor bag. This is the cutest mold!

I also included some homemade hot cocoa mix, packaged in little red plastic bags with a cute label made from Papertrey's set, Everyday Treats (love this set too!) and the Mat Stack 4 die. (I didn't have quite enough red bags, so one of them was packaged in a medium glassine bag) I also used some stamps from Papertrey's Holiday Treats set. Can you tell I'm a fanatic Papertrey fan?




Here are the adorable teacup & teapot candy cupcake toppers that we made. The following picture shows how sweet they looked on top of the cupcakes! The whole thing was really tasty too.



Finally, I made some bags of cookies for some members of my church's praise team. I had some cute snowman zip bags, so I simply made this little cardstock wrapper, stamped with more images from Everyday Treats & Holiday Treats.



Whew! Well, that pretty much catches up on all my December paper crafting projects. I had planned to make some fun handmade mini calendars as Christmas gifts, but with everything else I did, I didn't get to it. They ended up being "New Year's gifts", so I'll post more on those later.

Another Christmas card

I'm basically done with my Christmas cards, but I like to make more here & there when I have the chance. Most of the ones I made previously were 4.25" x 5.5" size, so I like to make some 5x7s also. For this one, I had some gorgeous snowflake chipboard glitter stickers that I got on massive clearance after Christmas this year and wanted to use them. So they were in the inspiration for this card.

I started with the green in the snowflakes and found some green cardstock to match, ran it through my Wizard with a 5x7 Cuttlebug Holly embossing folder. Then just added some ribbon and some patterned paper from another super cool clearance item I got last year, a We R Memory Keepers Christmas paper pack. Some red grosgrain ribbon, and some lovely little peppermint candy buttons and I was done! Then, of course, I had to fancy up the inside so I added more paper from the same pack and stamped the interior sentiment. Pretty easy, really!

Materials:
Chipboard glitter snowflakes: Kay & Co
Patterned paper: We R Memory Keepers
Buttons & ribbon: Misc (Oriental Trading, I think)
Embossing folder: Cuttlebug
Tools: Border punches, EK Success Slim Edgers
Stamp set (sentiment): Holiday Wishes, Papertrey

Thanksgiving Cards

And voila, here they are, as promised! Yay! Although I'm realizing that I would be better off taking pictures and posting on a more regular basis, rather than a whole pile at once...because it takes so long, but most importantly because I can't always remember the materials I used (name of stamp sets, paper, etc). Anyway, I'll do my best with these.

I used two paper packs, primarily...CTMH Twitterpated, a packet from last year that I was desperately trying use up because it has a fall theme (successfully used it up, BTW! yay! The frugal paper crafter in me jumps for joy ;)

AND a Fall paper collection from Oriental Trading. I rarely buy paper from them but they had some cute packs for very inexpensive the last time I was putting in an order, so I got sucked in. Their products are not always the top TOP-est quality, but usually I'm very satisfied with what I get for the price.

Here are the Twitterpated cards:





Additional materials used:
Paper leaves: Oriental Trading
Ribbon: CTMH
Pumpkin Brads: Oriental Trading
Stamp Set: Fall Elegance, Papertrey
Baker's Twine: Papertrey
Scallop Circle Punches: SU!
Markers: Bic
Ink: Chocolate, Sorbet, CTMH
Waxy Flax: CTMH

Oriental Trading cards:





All materials are from the OT fall theme paper packet, including the buttons, borders, corners, chipboard pieces & die cuts that match the chipboard pieces.
Additional materials used:
Stamp Sets: Fall Elegance, Papertrey; Dream Wishes, CTMH; Joy for the Journey, Verve
Ribbon/Twill/Hemp//Waxy Flax/Sassy Strands: CTMH
Large Brads: Paper Wishes
Bitty Sparkles: CTMH
Tools: Border Punch, EK Success; Scallop Circle & Circle dies, Spellbinders;

Get Well card

I made this card for my dad because he recently went through a serious back surgery and was in the hospital for 10 days. He had a rough time of it, but thanks to God, he's now leaving the hospital and on the mend, but it will be a long road to healing, so we keep on praying!

I wanted a card that represented the idea of going through a darker time and emerging into the light. Hence the gradation from a deeper blue to the yellow. I love this idea too because it enables me to use up a lot of my paper scraps! I'm such a frugal paper crafter...I rarely throw any pieces of paper away until they're super tiny. Therefore I have a HUGE pile of scraps (albeit nicely organized in an accordian folder by color). The folder grows by the day, so often I challenge myself to create a few cards just with scraps, (except for the card base). I love how this one turned out! (other than the sentiment not stamping too crisp...I guess I need to find a better solution to stamping on vellum!)

Here's the card:

Some old cards

So to anyone who might be reading this, it's probably painfully clear that I'm not entirely blogger prolific yet...there are many days in between my posts. I'm still getting up to speed with this whole blogging deal, and though I've made MANY cards since my last post, I haven't gotten in the groove of immediately taking pictures and posting the same day. I'll have to work on getting the hang of that. For now, I was going through a folder that has cards I've made in the past and found a few that I haven't posted here yet, so thought I'd share. These were from quite a long time ago (maybe January of this year?) but still kind of fun. I'll be posting my more recent cards later today (hopefully!) that I've made for Thanksgiving, etc. For now, here are some older cards.

Mom's Birthday Card



Rob's (brother) Birthday Card




Neighborhood Card

Tea Party Birthday Invitations...

It's that time of year again...(well, not quite yet, but I'm getting a big head start)...Natasha's birthday! Hard to believe she will be turning 7 in less than a couple of months. This year we're having her birthday party at a local tea room...so adorable! We just discovered that it existed recently, and as soon as we saw it, we knew we had to do her party there. She is so excited! Because of the tea party theme, I just had to have two sets that I saw from Waltzingmouse Stamps ~ Afternoon Tea & Afternoon Tea Sentiments. I used these two sets along with the one I used for all those tags in the previous 9 posts ~ Vintage Labels No. 2 ~ to make her birthday invitations. (Note: I just figured out how to add links to my posts ~ fun! ~ I hope this is helpful for anyone who might be reading my little ole' blog...I'm kind of new to this, but this is the start of much to come!) :)

I usually use an inspiration card or a sketch to jump start my cards, but this one I did totally from scratch! I'm very happy with the way it turned out. Now that I have the "prototype" ;) made, I just have to create an assembly line to make the other 10. Though I tried to make it fairly simple, I didn't succeed very well...I just love elaborate cards, what can I say! Hopefully the assembly line process will streamline the production. I need to get these out early because the cafe & tea room where we're having the party needs to know as far in advance as possible how many people to plan for. This is why I'm working on it so early this year. Also, it's nice to get these taken care of early because I have so many other projects scheduled for December, what with all the handmade gifts I have in the hopper.

I might post more of the invitations later as they will likely be several that are slightly different, due to the fact that I don't have enough paper to make them all exactly the same. Should be fun to see how the others turn out as well.

Materials used:
Stamp Sets: Afternoon Tea, Afternoon Tea Sentiments, Vintage Labels No. 2 (Waltzingmouse Stamps)
Patterned Paper: Stampin' Up Tea Party Designer Series paper
Cardstock: Papertrey Sweet Blush & CTMH Baby Pink
Ribbon: Stampin' Up poly twill in Saffron
Ink: CTMH Grey Wool, Baby Pink
Tools: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 2, EK Success border punch