Archive for December 23rd, 2009

Dec 23

Podcast-Inspired Gifts

Last night I had to clean up my craft desk (and my ‘unofficial storage space’, the futon beside my desk) because my parents are coming for Christmas. I thought I’d stick a podcast on in the background to keep me amused while sorting everything out. I noticed that I had a new episode of Scraptime in iTunes so I turned that on. And then I got out the papers and made more mess!

The episode I watched was #446 – Holiday Packaging.

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I had just decided earlier in the day to give a couple of my co-workers some homemade jam for Christmas. I was just going to bring in the jars, but when I saw this project, I knew it would fit my 125mL jam jars!

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I used up some Christmas paper, which is good – it’s just going to hang around until next year if I don’t!

I modified the boxes a little, not by size, although I thought about it. When putting the top piece on, I used Scor-Tape to adhere the back side of that piece to the back of the box. Then I punched holes in the front flap, then the front of the box, using the first set of holes as a guide (PS: I really want a Crop-a-dile. I got to use one at my last cardmaking class, and I love it!)

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I made that modification because the jam jars are just a little too big for the box, so they made the sides bow out, and I felt this way would put less pressure on the box. The picture above shows how I threaded the ribbon through the holes. I also made that top piece a little bigger than recommended. I think the red/green box was 3″ wide, and the swirly one was 4″. I like the 4″ width best.

I pulled the two Kitchen Tildas out of my bowl of stamped, coloured, and cut out Magnolia stamps. They don’t particularly match, but they don’t clash like crazy either, I think. Especially since I used blue ribbon on the box with the blue Tilda.

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I think I am going to use this box pattern A LOT. I can’t wait to try re-sizing it too!

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Dec 23

Creepy Head!

A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend mentioned he needed a $10-$15 gift to bring to his work’s Christmas party. It was the day after my giant box of stamps arrived, so I jumped on the chance and told him I’d make him something to bring.

I immediately knew which stamp I wanted to use: the creepy head. Yes, I know it is a phrenology head, but you have to admit it is pretty creepy, in an interesting way.

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I stamped 10 of those in black ink on creamy flat notecards, then decided I wanted to use a different stamp. I picked out the pear with handwriting, and a handwriting background. I stamped 10 pears with green ink on white flat cards, then made a mask of the pear and stamped the handwriting background over the pears:

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I think it is neat how the writing almost seems to match up.

To package, I picked out a Copic marker that was very close to the pear’s ink colour, and coloured some white ribbon. Then, I made a little label out of both stamps:

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He said they went over well at the party, and he must be right, because one of his coworkers wanted to buy some! She needed them for a friend she was doing a $10 gift exchange with, and she told me the friend likes oranges, yellows, and browns. I asked her how she felt about Creepy Head, or if I should switch to flowers or something else. She liked him, so I stamped him up a few more times in brown ink on the same cards:

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Then I decided to spice it up and use one of the weird astronomical instrument thingys for the other half of the set, in orange ink on white.

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I’m really liking the simplicity of the flat note cards. They can be more postcard-like, like the pears, in that most of the room to write is on the back; or you can have a lot of the front and all the back free, like with the smaller stamps.

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Posted in Papercrafts