Birthday Gift Bag

Hello!  As the holidays have gotten closer, lots of stuff has gotten in the way of my crafting, so I haven't had much to show lately!  In fact, all I have done since my mom's birthday card was a little gift bag for my daughter's friend.  She had her birthday party last weekend, and we got her a gift card for Claire's.  I thought it might be nice to do something besides just stick it in an envelope, and I remembered a cute little origami purse from a book I picked up recently at the UBS.  Origami Boxes by Florence Temko has lots of neat boxes, and what's nice is that there are very explicit instructions for the origami-challenged like me!  The purse is basically a triangle box with a handle added.  I thought it had a lot of potential.

My test worked out great, though small- using a 9x12 sheet of paper yields a box a little smaller than standard gift card dimensions.  We looked for some cute gift wrap that we could cut larger than 9x12 to get a bigger box, but there is very little selection out there for gift wrap anymore.  Remember when there was an entire asile in Target devoted to gift wrap?!  No more- I guess the trend has shifted to gift bags nowadays.  That doesn't help those of us who want to make our own!  Even Michael's only had a few designs, most plain, and not what we were looking for.  Since we were there, we decided to just pick out a scrapbook paper to make the small box, and would figure out a way to cram the gift card into it.  I had in mind using a cute patterned paper, but Meredith had other ideas.  She found a bright turquoise, fluffy gift bow that she just HAD to have, and wanted to use a matching paper for the box, so that is what we got.  It did present a challenge- since it was card stock weight, it was harder to fold, so if I had it to do over again, I would definitely go with a lighter weight paper.  All I did was fold the box- Meredith decorated it and made a little gift tag as well.  Here it is:

You can see that the poofy bow is fastened to the back, and it is larger than the box!  Here is the bow side:

Meredith's friend liked her gift a lot, and I think she liked the packaging too.  It was fun to try something different!  I'd love to try this again with a larger sheet of gift wrap.  Maybe we'll try it for some Christmas gifts!

That's it for now.  Not sure what's up next- I hestiate to plan much, since things are going to be so busy for the next month.  I am thinking about making some bookmarks similar to the ones I made for my son's band section leaders, just with the school colors and logo, but without the names and instruments.  The band boosters are holding a holiday bazaar on the evenings of the winter concerts and are looking for vendors for them.  I'm not sure I'd want to go and have a whole table to myself, but I thought about donating some bookmarks for the band boosters to sell at their merchandise table.  We'll see how much time I have between now and then!

A Bunch of Stuff- Bookmarks, Mini-Cards, and MojoMonday #214

Happy Veteren's Day Weekend!  It has been lovely to have a 3-day weekend, and it's always good to honor all of the veterens who have served our country!  Shout-out to my nephew Nick, who is in the USMC- we miss you, Nick!

Well, as Veteren's Day meant a day off work for me, it gave me some extra time to catch up on crafting.  I mentioned before that my mom's birthday is coming up, and I wanted to make her a card.  I made one yesterday, but I just did not like how it turned out.  I hadn't yet tackled the MojoMonday sketch of the week yet, so since I wasn't happy with what I came up with, I decided to use the sketch for my mom's card.  Here is the sketch:

And here is Mom's card:

It is similar to the card I made for my friend E last month, as it uses some of the same paper, and the same type of flower.  This was the first flower I made for E's card, which I deemed to large for that one, but I like it on this one.  Hopefully Mom will like it- and I hope it gets to her on time!

Next up, the mini-cards from the winter/holiday mini-card swap that I hosted at the PBS Swappers paper crafting group.  I realized waayyy after the fact that I completely forgot to take a picture of my cards before I mailed them out to the other participants!  So, my BFF Kendra was good enough to snap this pic of my cards for me.  Thanks K!

The top one, with the peppermint stripes, has a little peppermint drop embellishment on it in the lower left corner.  I found these buttons at JoAnn's, and just took off the back hardware so that it was a nice flat surface to glue it on.  The other two are variations of designs I've used before for other things, so no surprises there.

Finally, I have some new fall bookmarks!  Yesterday, my daughter had a friend over, and the three of us went out around the neighborhood and collected leaves.  I can't believe it has taken this long for the leaves to really fall off of the trees this year!  Anyway, we got lots of really nice ones, and I spent a good amount of time pressing them with my MicroFleur.  I have a very healthy stash of fall leaves now!  I made several bookmarks, and just listed 5 of them in my Etsy shop:

Next, I'd love to try some note cards with fall leaves, like the ones I did with pressed flowers.  I might experiment with that later this weekend if I have time.

One piece of exciting news- I was accepted to the Salem Etsy Sellers team on Etsy recently, and it seems like a great group!  They were actually having a craft fair today, though I came in a little too late to be able to participate.  But hopefully there will be others in the future.  It would be so much fun to meet other Etsy sellers from my area!

That's all for now- see you soon!

Masculine Holiday Card and Recipe Card

Hello!  Life got busy all of a sudden, and I haven't had any time to do any crafting for a couple of weeks.  I've been printing out the sketches for MojoMonday and CardPatterns, but haven't had time to do any more than glance longingly their way as I rush by to get something else done!  Well, hopefully things will settle down soon.  There's a holiday at the end of the week- hooray for three day weekends!  Also, I'm hoping (fingers and toes crossed) that work will slow down enough that I can take Thanksgiving week off.  Hopefully I can catch up then!

I did squeeze in a couple of quick projects this past weekend.  I had signed up for a couple of swaps in the PBS Swappers group, but forgot when they were due.  I checked this weekend, and oh my, I am right up against the deadline for both!  The first is for a masculine holiday card, due to the hostess by the 10th, and the other is a favorite recipe card, due to be in the mail to the hostess by the 10th.  Either way, the 10th is Thursday, so given that time is short during the work week, I had to get busy this past weekend.  Here is what I did:

The first card is for the masculine holiday card, obviously.  I was really stumped for this one...I always have difficulty coming up with a design that is specifically for men!  I picked up this striped paper a couple of weeks ago at JoAnn's, and thought that paired with the black, it made for a decent pallete for a masculine card.  I cut the red paper out with a deckled rectangle Spellbinder Nestabilities die, and also the sentiment boxes.  I used a pair of rough-edged scissors to cut the edges of the striped paper for a similar look.  I had a tough time with what to do for embellishments, and finally settled on these two ornament stamps, which I did in gold and silver.  Once finished, I still wasn't sure, so I solicited the opinion of my 15 year old son.  He liked it, so I guess it's ok!

The recipe card holds a recipe for chocolate chip pumpkin bread.  The original recipe came from Cooking Light, however, I modified it, and used my modified version on the card.  It is double-sided, with the ingredient list on one side (shown above) and the instructions on the other.  The card base is brown kraft paper, followed by a pumpkin orange layer, and then the recipe printed on white.  For embellishments, I punched leaves out using two different MS punches in off-white, and sponged ink on to give them fall colors.  I used the same stamp pad that I used for the fall card, so it is a similar look.  It's simple, but autumny, for one of my favorite autumn recipes!

My next project will be a birthday card for my mom, whose birthday is the 16th.  Hopefully I can get to that one this weekend.  My hubby's birthday is the 18th, so maybe I'll try to squeeze one  in for him too...although technically he already got his gift- a trip to Colorado to see an Oregon Ducks game a few weeks ago.  Plus, he sees my cards all the time anyway!