Paper Crafty Gifts with Surprises

Happy Friday Everyone!

I wanted to share some special handmade Christmas gifts I made for the girls that I bowl with on Wednesday nights. Funds were a little tight this year for Christmas gifts, so I had to think of gifts that were inexpensive and thoughtful. I couldn't do any stitching gifts because of time unfortunately. I just don't think that far ahead when it comes to planning who gets what for Christmas. I am a procrastinator when it comes to gift giving. That's partly because I'm just indecisive with gifts. I like to take the time to find the perfect gift. I don't like giving something to just give something. I hate the thought of giving someone an item that they may never need, use or even appreciate.

For these gifts, I decided to give the girls scratch off lottery cards hidden inside of handmade gift card holders. I got the idea from watching a webisode on Paper Wishes.com. If you love to do papercrafts like cards and scrapbooking, you have to check out this website. Their products are awesome and they provide so much inspiration and ideas to crafters who love working with paper.

What do you think? I purchased an awesome set of materials that consisted of the papers, gift card template, ribbons and dazzle stickers. I purchased the little jewel circle dazzle stickers separately. The link to the materials is here.

My favorite are the snowmen. :) I just love snowmen.

Now I will admit that I panicked a little bit because the scratch off cards actually turned out to be bigger than gift cards. I literally was finishing these at the last minute to give them to the girls that same night and when the cards didn't fit inside, I was like Noooo! Then my dear honey suggested I just fold them a little bit to make them fit and that did the trick. Crisis Averted!

Now for my added finishing touch...a ribbon hanger so these could be hung on their trees. I glued the ribbon ends to the back and covered them with a matching piece of paper.

The girls just loved these. Two of them told me that they only decorate their trees with handmade items, so their gift card holder fit perfectly in with their decorating. Another girl told me that she still has hers on her tree and she hasn't scratched her tickets yet. We laughed at her because for all she knows, she could have some winners just hanging there on her tree!

Thank you for visiting with me today. I so enjoy reading your sweet comments. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I will be spending part of my Saturday at work unfortunately and that will be the norm for this month. Just a ton of work to do at the office and not enough hours in the week. Hopefully, our co-worker who has been gone the last 6 weeks on a family emergency will be back next week. We will see.

**Hugs**
Jen

Paper Crafting: Valentines Favors

Happy Saturday Friends:

For Valentines Day, I wanted to give something small to the girls on my Wednesday night bowling team. Can't go wrong with chocolate right? Usually not (unless you find out later than one of your teammates is diabetic! Whoops!) Oh well, her husband enjoyed the treat for her I'm sure.

I found an awesome tutorial on the Split Coast Stamper website for a candy bar holder made with paper. These were quick to make.

All of the material came from my paper stash. I used Valentines Papers from K & C Company. Ribbons are from Paper Wishes. Stickers and pearls from ??? ( I have so much, I can't keep track of everything.)

I hope you all are having a fabulous Saturday.

Toodles for now!
Jen

A Halloween ATC Holder with ATC's

Hello Friends:

I have a paper project I wanted to share. I participated in an exchange in October on the Paper Wishes Message Board. It was an "ABC" challenge, (Anything but a Card). We were to make two items. My exchange partner was Fabrizio ( Fab) . He is such a talented card artist, you have to visit his blog. He also has a mobile friendly website for card making called PaperMood.com

I wanted to make two Artist Trading Cards, but I wanted to put them inside something else. I had these wonderful items called Sara Surface 4-Fold Folders from Paper Wishes in my stash. You can decorate them in so many ways. I decided to cover each side and pocket with different Halloween papers and added some Gothic Halloween Dazzles.

Front Outside

Inside under Flap

Folder all Opened Up (Sorry its so small. I cropped this pic too much)

Artist Trading Cards

In case you were wondering, I did not free hand the stickled Spider Webs. I used a Halloween Paper with Spider Webs on it. I just outlined the design on the paper. :)

All of the materials for these projects came from Paper Wishes.

Thanks for looking!

Jen

An Autumn Paper Wreath

Happy Holiday Weekend!

I hope everyone is enjoying their relaxing weekend with friends and family. I love fireworks so I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow. The only downside is going to work the following day, but such is life right.

So between yesterday and today, I worked on a different paper project. Paperwishes.Com has many kit clubs and they are all wonderful values. If I had more money, I would get all of them. Unfortunately since food is more important, I have opted for a couple. One of the kits I get each month is called Class in a Box and they are fantastic. You get two projects to make and all of the materials to make them. It is a great way to try new paper crafts and you make beautiful items to either give as gifts or keep for yourself. Needless to say I have many kits I have yet to work on, so since I had extra time to play this weekend, I pulled one out. It was an Autumn paper wreath.

It is made from 64 paper leaves. The blue/orange leaves are made from a specialty paper called Color Me Paper. They come as white glossy papers with embossed images and you can color them with many mediums. The more popular method of coloring the papers is by taking an ink pad to them directly and then wiping the excess ink off so the embossed designs show up and the ink stays as the background color. A lot of fun to play with. I add a little bit of gold stickles to the tips of the leaves for a little shine. I think I will have a go at making another one but out of Christmas colors this time. I really enjoyed making this. Cutting the 64 leaves was not that much fun, but once that is done the rest is easy.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays everyone. :)
Jen

Baby Shower Projects

Hello Again:

I have more projects to share. My co-workers and I attended a baby shower luncheon today at The Cheesecake Factory for a girl we all used to work with. She is having a baby boy and is extremely excited. I am so happy for her. Since I am the crafty one of the department, I volunteered to make a baby card for her from all of us and I volunteered to make little party favors.

First the card:

It is a 5 1/2 X 5 1/2 square card. The papers are from a paper pack called Nona's Nursery "Baby Boy" by DCWV. The digi is from Sew Many Cards colored with colored pencils. If you look really closely, there is a punched border on the bottom that I layered over. It was made with a Martha Stewart punch. The embellishment that looks like a charm bracelet I bought from Michaels. It was in the scrapbook section and I believe it was a Jolie's embellishment. Funny enough I bought this for another card I made some time ago and never used it. It was sitting in my stash ever since. The pearls are from my stash. The ribbon is from Paper Wishes and Stickles were added for the final touch. I just love stickles, don't you? To me, they just turn a card from it looks nice to dazzling! We all know women love shiny things. :D

My next project are the party favors I made. I used the Picnic Basket template from Paper Wishes. I used papers from the same paper stack as the card because they were nice and heavy. I added stickles and a bow, lined them with tissue paper and added Herrshey's chocolate kisses for the treats. Everybody loved them. In fact, my manager hinted to me that she might make an order of these for an anniversary party. I was like "Huh, come again?" LOL.

Thanks for looking and I hope you all enjoy your weekend.

Jen

A Valentine Candy Bar Holder

Happy Sunday Everyone!

I have a special project to share with you all today. I am very excited about this project because it was different and I had so much fun making it. I was browsing around the Delightful Inspirations Card Ideas Blog when I came across Debbie's Blog: The Paper Garden. I absolutely fell in love with her project which was a Candy Bar Holder. You can access the instructions by clicking here. I thought, 'WOW that would be a wonderful project for my boyfriend for Valentine's Day." He likes surprises and he knows my obsession with paper crafting. I'm sure he's expecting me to do something out of the ordinary that is not a card. Plus he loves chocolate.

The pictures are up top as you can see. I must need to buy "Blogger for Dummies" or something because I couldn't figure out how to get the pictures under this post rather than above it. But that's okay, you get the idea. :) I used double-sided designer papers from K & Company. The digi focal is "Puppy Love" from Bugaboo Stamps. I colored him with colored pencils and matted him onto some scraps of the designer paper. I accented the front just a little bit with Red Stickles. (Remember this project is for a guy LOL) The sentiments I wrote and printed myself and the Ribbon is from Paper Wishes. Now I just need to go get the chocolate to finish it. Plus I need to find some place to hide this so he doesn't find it before tomorrow. ;-)

I'm entering this project into three challenges:

1) Stamp Something - Valentines
2) Crafty Catz - Valentines/Love Theme
3) The Pixie Cottage - Ribbon

Thanks for looking and enjoy your special day with your other half tomorrow. :D

Jenn

Some Non-Card Creations

You know you like your hobby when you stay up till the wee hours playing even though you know tomorrow is a work day. LOL Hey we all need to escape when the need arises. Tonight I worked on some projects for two swaps over at the Paper Wishes Message Board. One swap was a Scrapbooking Swap and the theme was to make tag like items using Red, White and Blue. For these I actually used a new template I bought. The folded items are actually "ribbon bows" not pinwheels or flowers. It is an awesome template and I'm glad I got it. The other swap theme was "Summer" and to make anything but a card. So I decided to make a picnic basket. What is great is that my recipient can turn around and re-use it as a gift box to someone else. Little does she know that inside I stuffed a few goodies from my craft stash for her.

Thanks for looking! Hope your Friday goes fast and your weekend goes slow. Wishful thinking I know, but hey its okay to dream right?? :D