CASE-ing the Catty #24 - Occasions Easter

Welcome to another CASE-ing the Catty challenge.  Each week the theme for the challenge takes inspiration from the Stampin' Up! catalogues, often choosing a section or layout as the basis for creativity.  This week the challenge will run for two weeks and focus, appropriately, on the Easter section of the Occasions Catalogue.

I have my inspiration from page 34 of the catalogue, using the cute little Easter basket in greens and pinks.  I have used the Berry Basket die in Blushing Bride, stamped with the Woodgrain stamp - I just love this combination. I made a lid for the berry box out of  vellum, adding leaves stamped with Choose Happiness, then fussy cut.  I used a couple of the individual leaves on the tag.  The flower on top of the lid doubles as a handle!  I made it using layers of Blossom and Pansy punches, scrunching them up and attaching to the lid using a brad.

Here is a close up of the tag, I made this using a piece of cardstock 2" x 4.5" folded in half.  I used the Ornate Tag Topper punch on the folded end but not putting the cardstock in the whole way, leaving it about 1/8" from the end maintaining the fold. By doing this I have created a tag that opens, I stamped one side with the Woodgrain stamp and then added the vellum layer over the top.  The sentiment is from the absolutely gorgeous stamp set Indescribable Gift.

The challenge is open for two weeks due to the Easter break so check out the Easter section of the Occasions Catlogue and pop over to the CASE-ing the Catty challenge blog, get some more inspiration and join in.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Easter Gift Box and Card

Easter is such a special time of the year, and I wish I was closer to my family to celebrate with them. Unfortunately they are over 1,700km away so that just isn't possible.  I decided that this year I would make an Easter gift and card for the family of my daughter's boyfriend.  She spends a lot of time with them so I wanted to do something special, not just buy a box of chocolates - these are my creations.

First the box, I was going to use a pre-made box from Stampin' Up! but found none were quite the right size for the chocolates I wanted to give.  So the only alternative was to make a box myself!  I used the Natures Composition Speciality DSP for the base of the box, it is quite a heavy weight that is more like a stiff card stock than a paper so it was perfect.  It is difficult to see but I used the sheet with the floral pattern and brayered it with Crushed Curry.  I made the lid from Window Sheet and made the faux band from Melon Mambo and Gold Embossed Vellum.  The box is of course filled with Easter Eggs and Lindt Balls.

I wanted to make a card that matched so after some false start sketches I decided to go with a bigger sentiment and butterfly and I am happy with the result.  They are quite bright, but Easter is a time for celebration and so the brightness seemed to fit perfectly.  You may notice that I have stamped the flowers using the Encore Gold Ink in the Occasions Catalogue, and then coloured parts of the petals with Melon Mambo to give some depth of colour.  The centre flower on both the box and card are raised on Dimensionals and curled.

Box Measurements
Base
- 10" x 10" Card Stock
- Score on each side at 2-3/4"
- Base adhered with TomBow Glue

Lid
- 10-1/8" x 10-1/8" (this is a smidge bigger so the lid fits neatly over the base)
- Score on each side at 2-3/4
- When cutting the fold over flaps, I trimmed these to 1/4 inch so they are less conspicuous.
- Lid adhered with Sticky Strip

Happy Stamping

Easter Gifts - Part 2

When our daughter was younger we used to do Easter egg hunts around the house,  however she is now a bit older, and we also now own two cats who I am sure would do the egg hunting for us given half the chance. My husband, newly diagnosed with bad cataracts, also thought that an egg hunt would have him at a severe disadvantage! So now I make little Easter baskets for putting the hunting eggs in.

This year I made each of us a little basket using the Fancy Favour die, trimmed to 6cm tall.  I just love Everybunny so had to use that stamp set, and chose the little girl bunny for our daughter, my mother and myself, and the little boy bunny for my father and husband.

Here you can see the side of the boxes.  To make these is very easy and while I don't have photos to show you of the steps I can tell you exactly how they were made.

• Trim a Fancy Favour box to be 6cm tall (not counting the bottom flaps)
• Cut a piece of DSP 3" x 12"  
• Score the DSP at 4 7/8"  and again at 7 1/8"
• Before adhering to the Fancy Favour box hold the two ends together and punch out the 'handle' using the Large Oval Punch. I found by positioning a piece of punched out Post-It note I was able to have the handles exactly where I wanted them.
• Then simply adhere the DSP around the box (I used Tombow glue), fill with Easter eggs, and tie the handles with ribbon. 

I realised as I wrote this that I have combined metric and imperial measurements - something I do quite regularly with projects lol.  For those who like the inches - the Fancy Favour is trimmed at 2 3/8".

Happy Stamping

Been busy

Well its been a while since I posted anything, and I really need to get more motivated to upload my projects. Inspired to do this as I am directing more people to my blog and think there should be more here if they take the time to come and look.


This one is a card I made for my parents for Easter. I needed a religous themed cards, but sadly no stamps that met this criteria ... so after having a look on Split Coast Stampers I found one to CASE, then got a bit creative.

I printed out and cut a cross on computer paper then used the cut out cross as a mask and coloured the background using Pastels, I used the yellow to make the apperance of a halo. The cross on the page looked a bit too plain and stark, so used the vine stamp out of Vingage Vogue set from the Autumn/Winter mini, to create the effect of vines on the cross. To do this I used the paper which I cut the original cross out of to mask the card. Vingage Vogue flowers and leaves were added with half pearls in the centre. I can't remember the exact colours used but think it was So Saffron, Elegant Eggplant and one of the greens. I was so happy with it I made another one for my in-laws also.