Christmas Paper Gifts

Hello again! Christmas is only 2 more sleeps! I AM SO EXCITED! I am also feeling a bit stretched out :( My family has family coming in from out of town and that excites me, they will be here tomorrow (or should be) and I can see some aunts and uncles from out of town. Then tomorrow night we are heading to Chris's folks house to spend the night and then Christmas day spending it with his family. The big suck in all of this is that Chris has to work late Christmas eve and early (four am early) Boxing day. I despise retail for that! SO when you are out getting your sales and enjoying your gift cards- please be courteous to the ones out there that are sacrificing time with their families so the stores can be opened crazy early. Me? Ima stay home :D HAHA I DON'T do well in crowds- I love small spaces, but being in crowds makes me claustraphobic. I forget what it's really called. But all in all I think we'll squeeze enough Christmas spirit in the small time alloted and remember- it may be cliche- but Jesus IS the reason for the season :)

In all that being said- here are some eye candy treats for you all- the only kind of candy I wound up making this year :S Usually I make homemade truffles and chocolates- but baby taking all momma's energy had DIFFERENT plans. Sleepy plans!

Here's what I whipped up for teacher's gifts this year. I posted one earlier on in Novemeber, using the box that a Martha Stewart border punch came in- I tore it apart and adapted it a bit. I used velcro to close them and they were so much fun and easy to make once I got the template down pat! Embelishing was simple and quick using border punches, Stampin' Around Jumbo wheels (have I mentioned lately that I LOVE them??? lol!) and STICKLES! Okay- Ranger industries??? You guys are officially GENIUSES in my book for inventing such versatile, colourful and PRETTY embellishments! I used acetate for the 'windows', but vellum would work too! I cheated- as I typed above I usually make candy- and have some GREAT recipes for caramel, hazelnut cream, peanut butter cups and nougat- but this year I just didn't have the energy- so I cheated and bought mini peanut butter cups and hershey's kisses! I have a great plan using this little template in a bit- and EP (energy permitting) I should be whipping up one today for a gift and posting it later :)

Another teacher's gift I whipped up was for a friend of mine- who, coincedentally enough is a teacher as well- my daughter's pre-school teacher- but she wanted me to make some for her son's teacher. She loved the stationary desk set I whipped up using an adaptation of my Milk Crate and adding pockets. Using a christmas theme for each of them I came up with these little cuties:

These 'crates' have two pockets in the front for 2x2 items- whether it's notecards or tags as seen here. Nothing is as cute as little homemade tags taped to the top of your Christmas package! then I made two mini boxes to seperate the 3x3 notecards- great for large gifts or gift bags and the back is storage for A2 greeting cards. I was able to fit 5 of the smaller cards and I made 4 greeting cards- tho you could add more. All sentiment stamps are from Inkadinkado, border stamps are All Night Media (acorn stamp on the pink) and Stampin' Around wheels. Then for embelishments I turned to simple border punches from EK Success, ribbons and stickles. I think next year I'm going to give myself more time because I'd definatly love to give these little treasures away- and keep some for myself!

So there are some Christmas ideas for all of you- if I don't post before then I hope you all have:

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE BEST IN THE NEW YEAR !!!!!!!!!

Much love and God's blessings,

~Brandie~

AUGH!!!

Not the original title of my post- but GRRRR the computer button is RIGHT beside my computer chair and VOILA! You have an 'off' computer in the middle of a post and everything is gone! This autosaves- but I have no idea how to get to it! SO! Blah blah blah- saying I was pregant with only 7 weeks left- but it leaves me considerably drained of energy! Blah blah blah- don't have the energy to make my usual Christmas cards and gifts blah blah blah excited for baby bean to get here.

There- now you're all caught up ;) lol Ahhhh- it was just a vent point for me to carry on about how tired I've been lately and how excited I am for Christmas next year when I'll have a 10 mth old on some what of a schedule and wont be pregnant so I'll be back to my Brandie self- and so long as there is a Christmas to celebrate, I will be making and baking and candy creating like I have been in past years.

But in running my on-line store I've had a few orders to keep me busy and I have some stuff to share :) And I did get some teacher's gifts and class favours done- so that's pretty cool. I am finishing up some baking today and IF (big if) I feel motivated enough, I may even make some paper craft boxes to store the baking in. I feel guilty not doing what I usually do, but I've overdone it for the past week trying to meet personal deadlines that I need to cut myself some slack and think of me and baby and our health. Only 4 days til Christmas and it'll be full of family times and fun and (YUMMO!) food. So little boxes and cards don't seem that important :) I love doing it- but really- I have tons of excuses to craft, Christmas doesn't need to exsist just for me to craft :)

SO! all that being said, let me show you what I've been busy with:

So I lifted this little idea from SCS- and I am sorry, I can't remember from who or even what it was called. If you search "acetate" I'm sure you'll find the ingenioused woman who came up with this! What I did was cut a peice of cardstock to 5.5x4.75 and score lengthwise at .5 so I have a half an inch tab. That tab was used to attach a peice of acetate measured at 5.5x4.25 that I embossed using my snowflake cuttlebug folder. I used pop dots to add a piece of DSP to the top and bottom of the acetate and stamped with a Christmas inkadinkado clear stamp set. I also cut some snowflakes out of vellum using my snowflake die from Cuttlebug and attached them to the front. I made a matching box and then sent ten of these, along with some cookies, to a friend of mine for her birthday (well- she bought the cards- the cookies were a gift :) )

NOW! I have no clue why I haven't used my Stampin' Around Wheels more often- but ladies GET THEM OUT! HAHA! Not only do they make a wonderful background for giftboxes (which is why I bought them) they are super cute for borders! WHY OH WHY didn't I do this before? I saw some cute ones from Hero Arts at Michaels and pointed them out to hubby for Christmas gift ideas and he said "don't you have border stamps? isn't that why the HUGE stampin' up order in spring was for?" so I was like *sigh* okay and I whipped them out and started using them for borders. *insert maniacal laughter here* so much fun! So here are a couple of the creations I came up with:

Here's a Christmas card using Soft Holly Standard wheel with Bravo Burgendy ink. To make the pointsettas (in which I am very proud!) Using vellum, I cut 2 large flowers from my Olivia alpha set for the cuttlebug- you can use any pointed flower punch- and then I layered two of the flowers together with Zots and then 'painted' them with Stickles. The stickles not only added glitter- but they warped the paper to give it a 3D look. Then you can add either a gold brad or gold stickles to the center. The punch is Holly from EK success- wonderful punch BUT it's not a traditional border punch. It wont 'punch' a border, but a seperate peice that you can add on (if that makes sense).

So steering away from Christmas, here are some basic cards using the Stampin' Around standard wheels:

So for this thank you card I used Forever Flowers and Mellow Moss- then using Itty Bitty buds I added the flowers to the edge. NOW you can't tell, but the card is standard A2 size in total, but the outside sentiment peice is 4.25x4.25 and the extra edge is over extended in the back.

For the birthday cards here I used some scraps of DSP from the Spring catalogue and for the pink it was Bella Rose, with Always in Bloom Stampin' Around Wheel and the blue was .... I forget the name of the paper- but Baroque Border was the wheel I used. So as you can see, using these wonderful wheels can open up a wide world of cardmaking that I wasn't even aware of! lol I just love making packaging and all I wanted was to create my own background paper for the boxes. So hopefully you've got some ideas here and with two more working days til Christmas maybe I wasn't TOO late in inspiring you ;) More tomorrow- I want to share my teacher's gifts before the big day. So have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!

~Brandie~