Post Valentine Kisses

What a weekend! I know down in the States my American friends just celebrated their Presidents day and up here in the frozen north of Alberta (though it's been strangely mild this February. I don't trust it) we celebrated Family Day. The idea is to go no-tech and enjoy each other's company, and while I DO love my hubs and kids, we're not very out doorsy/large groups of people-people. So we stayed tucked in and had pizza and a movie night. Then being as the kids had Friday off for in service day those lucky ducks had an extended weekend and momma hadn't had time to blog Valentine's treats til now.

Have I mentioned that I love pinterest? I was going to go all rustic and start making my own crackers (epic fail) paints (so epic fail) and body cleansers/detoxes (still on the fence). After many fails there I gave up on trying to make my own lotions and face scrub. SCREW IT! says I. I'll just keep the local grocery store in service that way. But that aside, pintrest has some amazing ideas for home renos, refurbishing old items around the house AND baking/crafting :D (my two most favouritest of things! lol) So I got this nifty idea off of there to buy some strawberry wafer cookies (on sale- thank you Save On foods!) and dip them half way into chocolate. So I bought white chocolate melts (can't stand the stuff- good thing too or I would have eaten all the kids treats) and some Valentine's sprinkles. I wanted to do Inking Idaho's purse tutorial but it was too small for what I had in mind so mine just became a bag topper. I got to use my new Sale A Bration goodies (just over a month left!!!!!!! make sure you get your parties in folks!) and my Hearts a Flutter bundle stamps and dies.

 So I used my Top Note die and turned and scored it length ways instead of width ways, used 4x6 cellophane baggies which fit 3 dipped bars nicely. I used the small heart found in the Create A Cupcake stamp set. I also got to use my brand new That's the Ticket Stamp set and duo ticket punch :) A cute versatile little set. You can also get the Take A Ticket Stampin' Around wheel for the punch. The tickets on it ARE a bit smaller than the punch, but you can still punch the center out and have a cute little ticket :)

Now, for the past few years I have also made a
Valentine's treat for my kiddos. You will notice that there are only 3- that's because Mat is 3 and wouldn't care (don't worry! He DID get candy too! lol). I used 4 of Stampin' Up!'s 1x8 cellophane bags and put M&M's in them. 2 bags of candy filled 4 cellophane bags. Being as they are 8 inches I then trimmed 1/2-1/4 inch off the side of a standard sheet of cardstock. So the cardstock is trimmed to 8x10 inches. I scored each side length wise at 3 and 3.5 inches so I have a half inch rise on both sides. The flaps on both sides don't meet in the middle perfectly, there is a bit of an overlap, and I used this to my advantage. Now I wanted to use my Hearts a Flutter die to cut those window hearts out, but my paper was too big to feed through my Big Shot so I cheated and used another punch. If you can figure out how to feed a larger piece of paper through the Big Shot without scrunching the paper up, I'm all ears ;) . So I created a back ground with a retired So Swirly Jumbo Wheel and then various hearts from my stamp sets. I layered some coordinating cardstock and DSP and then made some belly bands. I grabbed some ribbon I had laying around and made the strands super long so I could use some cut-out hearts and layer them with dimensionals and added a wooden button in the center of them. I used my Fabulous Phrases stamp set, along with that same little heart, and my 1 inch circle punch and the coordinating 1 1/4 scalloped circle punch found in the Spring Catalogue.
The kids loved them and I had a blast making them over coffee with a friend.

Well that's it for me for today. Thanks for stopping by!

~Brandie~