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

Easter Gifts - Part 1

This Easter has been a special one for me as my parents were able to visit, not only for Easter, but for my birthday as well.  I wanted to make them something a little special and so came up with these cute little card boxes.  

This one is the one I made for my father, I wanted to use some masculine colours and textures so chose the lovely Natural Trim Ribbon, it matches perfectly with Crumb Cake and is inspired by Hessian so has a lovely rough texture.  Just the thing when you want to add a ribbon but keep the masculine feel to the project.  Some masking with the Everybunny stamp set created the cute little scene.

This is the inside of the 'card', and as you can see the base of the card is actually a box that holds a block of Cadburry's chocolate.  My father had Old Gold Rum and Raisin in his.

 This is the front of the box I made for my mum.  I wanted it to be far more feminine and so used some retired DSP and carried the colours through to the flowers from Bordering on Romance.  I just adore the sentiment, an a la carte stamp called Easter Blessings (well named lol).  In the box for mum I put a big block of Peppermint chocolate which she also loved.  

I love being able to create special gifts for people, and I know my parents appreciate the extra care that goes into a gift like this.  I will post again tomorrow to show off the cute little Easter baskets I made for everyone too.

Happy Stamping

Welcome Baby

Last week one of the ladies from work had her baby!  Welcome to the world little Maeve, who by all reports is a sweet little girl who is very well behaved and doesn't mind being handed around for lots of cuddles.  I decided to make a card for the team to sign to send out good wishes, I started out with the sketch at Pals Paper Arts.

I was particularly inspired by Cindy Halls card.  I really, really love the Twitterpated DSP, and who could resist using a little bunny.  I dressed young Thumper in pink for this card and gave 'her' a little pink flower instead of the Easter Egg that is part of this stamp.  I used the Organza ribbon over a piece of Melon Mambo card stock punched each side with the Scallop Border Punch to match the scallop circle from the Pennant Parade die.

Happy Stamping

More Easter Fun

Firstly let me apologise for my post being late, not only did I have a very hectic week, I came home today ready to put up my post only to discover my computer had died! After a couple of hours of frustratingly trying to resuscitate it, I have given up and am working off my 10" Netbook!  Anyway enough of my frustrations and on with today's post ...

Another week flown past at amazing speed, where is this year going?  The good thing about another week gone past is that it is time for another Paper Lovin' Gals Inspirational Picture challenge.  What inspires you with this picture?  For me it was the general theme of Easter, and of course the eggs!

I knew I wanted to do a 3D item for this week's challenge this week and the Big Shot Box #2 Die was just perfect for the job.  I just had to use Everybunny stamp set again, I knew this little guy with his own Easter Egg would match the eggs visible through the window cut by the smallest Framelits Die.  It is so easy to use these dies to put a window anywhere that you want, and I just love the shape of them.  I chose the Happy Easter sentiment from Teeny Tiny Sentiments, inking up each word separately and punching them out with the Jewelry Tag Punch.

Pop on over and join in with Paper Lovin' Gals this week, and have a great Easter.

Happy Stamping

Almost Easter

If you are a regular visitor to my blog you will know that I have had some fun recently with the Everybunny stamp set in preparation for Easter.  This week Paper Lovin' Gals have another great challenge that screamed out for me to use this cute set once again.

What does this picture inspire you to create? Something with an Easter theme or using the colours like I have, or will something else in the picture take your fancy - a basket, ribbons and bows, just the bunny or something completely different?  That is the great thing about the PLG challenges it doesn't matter what in the photo inspires you, just create away and join in! 

Usually at Easter time as a family we do an Easter Egg hunt, but this year with two cats (one of which will get into anything) I was a bit worried about leaving chocolate eggs lying around - especially as we routinely don't find all the eggs on Easter Sunday!  I decided to make this little door hanger to get around the problem of leaving chocolates out overnight.  The base is made from the Fancy Favour die, and I have added a panel of cardstock to the inside of the box and punched out a circle using the large circle punch.  I have created a window in the front of the box so that the eggs will be visable once the Easter Bunny has visited.  The cute little mushroom stamped image is of course from the Everybunny stamp set, as is the sentiment which I inked up part of and punched out.  I just love the mini brads on this punch, they seem just the right size to give a bit of pop without being over the top.

I hope I have helped to inspire you to join in with us this week, if you need a bit of extra inspiration pop on er to Paper Lovin' Gals blog to see what the other design team members have made.

I am also entering this item in Hand Stamped Sentiments and 4 Crafty Chicks Easter challenges.

Happy Stamping

Easter Fun

Boy have I had fun this weekend, did very little off my jobs list but made some super cute items.  I bought the Everybunny stamp set recently and have just fallen in love with these cute little critters. I decided this year I wanted to make a couple of things to sell at work and these are what I came up with ...

I think this one might just be my favourite so she gets to go first.  I used the Everyday Enchantment DSP from Sale-A-Bration as well as the ribbon from SAB too. I just adore this DSP and will be so sad when it retires at the end of the month.  I am going to enter this card in Festive Friday Challenge this week.

This one I wanted to focus on the greens and blues as I haven't used this side of the DSP as much, and am really pleased with the finished card.

My final card using this layout, back to the reds and suede again!  All are stamped onto watercolour paper with Stazon ink and coloured with the Blender pens.  

This is a copy of the tutorial that Brenda from Qbee's Quest put up, it was too cute to try and improve on!  If you can believe it they are even more adorable in person.  The DSP I used for these boxes is one from a retired set from 2 years ago called Kaleidoscope.

These are the other 3D item I made, little bag toppers made with a range of DSP cut out with the new Framelits dies for the Big Shot.  I used stamps from Everybunny, again stamping them onto watercolour paper and colouring them with my blender pen, before punching them out and layering on the front. The two on the outside show the front of the bags, and the middle one shows the back.  A little secret ... I used a staple to keep the bags closed and the front and back images hide the staple!

I have 6 other Everybunny cards, but will post them up in a couple of days.  

Happy Stamping

Easter Basket

I had some extra time on my hands this week so time to play along with the challenge at Friday Mashup.  This week the challenge was to make a basket and/or make a project using green and yellow.  I always like to try to do the mashup and this week was no exception.  I am also entering this in Crazy 4 Challenges blog - Easter or Spring themed; and SU Only challenge - "Its fun being green". 

I used my Fancy Favour to make the base of the box, I love this die, makes it so easy to produce a perfect little box.  I added a handle using the Lace Ribbon Border Punch which I threaded with Ice-cream Parlour. The image on the front of the box is from the Everybunny stamp set, isn't he cute?  I have cut him out using the Framelits Dies that will be coming in the new Autumn/Winter Mini, these two are the two smallest of the dies in the set.  This is the box we will be making at the Easter Card Class I will be holding, contact me if you live in the Canberra area and would like to come along.

Happy Stamping

Anybunny for Framelits?

Today I had a lovely surprise when I opened my front door to find a brown Stampin' Up! box on my doorstep.  It was my items from pre-order for the Autumn/Winter Mini Catalogue and I was sooo excited to start playing.  This next mini catalogue would have to be my favourite ever, so many beautiful things.  The great part about being a demonstrator is that I get to purchase them a month earlier than they are generally available. 

This is the second card I made today, a cute little easel card using the new Framelits Labels collection dies and the Everybunny stamp set from the main catalogue.   These little bunnies are just too darn cute!  On this card I have combined three of the stamps using masking techniques, the little girl bunny with the basket, the boy bunny with the egg, and the mushrooms.  I love how it has come together to create a little scene.  You can't see it so well in this photo but I cut the little girl bunny out and added her to the card using Dimensionals.

It wasn't until I went in search of a tag for my sentiment that I realised how well the Lots of Tags Sizzlet die matched the new Labels Framelits!  I can see me using these together quite a bit in the future.

I am entering this card into the Festive Friday challenge this week.  I haven't had chance to join in with the challenges there this year, and was very excited to see that the next few weeks will be Easter themed!  This week we had to choose a card that inspired us and then create our own version.  My inspiration was not a single card, rather all of the beautiful easel cards I have seen, most of which come from the very talented Bronwyn Eastley.

Happy Stamping