Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 8: Christmas Leftovers

 

I haven't done many Christmas layouts (so far, I've done only one) but after I was done, I was left with all these small paper scraps - much like food left over from all the feasting :).  Now I could've easily thrown them out, but I just thought they were too pretty to dispose of.  And this is my dilemma with other paper scraps as well, so what I do with the scraps is to punch out shapes that I can use for future projects.  Here I used a cupcake punch that cuts out a separate top and bottom, so it's easy to mix and match patterns.

 

Of course, this solves the problem of storing paper scraps.  I put my punched out shapes in little resealable baggies and I now have a small collection of hearts, butterflies, flowers, etc.  Here, I used the cupcake punch outs to embellish tags and gift cards.  This paper collection (K & Co.'s Peppermint Twist by Brenda Walton) is a Christmas one, but many of the designs are flexible enough that these can be used for birthdays and other types of celebrations.

Materials:  Patterned paper (K & Company), cardstock (Moods), puncher (EK Success Paper Shapers).

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 6: Stamped & Embossed Gift Tags

In the Philippines, the Christmas season is long, it starts way before Christmas (if you judge it by the music and decorations in the mall, that would be around Sept./Oct.) and ends well into the next year (about a week after New Year's Day).  It makes for a very festive few weeks, and I don't know about you, but it's the day after Christmas, and I still have gifts to wrap and distribute to friends and family ;)

So I've made these gift tags ahead of time, but were unable to use them for the first batch of gifts that have already been given out.  I used stamps and embossing folders to decorate these, but I still like how simple these are and easy to make.  The stamped ones above are made from cardstock scraps, and I stamped them with a regular office-use stamp pad in green (I have a variety of different colors aside from the red one, for dating paper submissions). 

And for these tags (above) and tiny gift cards (below) I used my Texture Boutique and four different embossing folders that fit in with the Christmas theme.  These are so fun and easy to do that I want to make some more - that I'll probably get to use next Christmas.

Materials:  Cardstock (Moods), stamp pad (HBW Office), one-hole punch, Sizzix Texture Boutique embossing machine, embossing folders (Cuttlebug - Snowflakes & Swiss Dots, Ellison Textured Impressions - Ornate Swirls & Winter Words), clear stamps (Making Memories - Noel).

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 4: Upcycled Gift Tags

Christmas shopping can be truly stressful.  Fortunately, there are some little conveniences that the mall provides to their customers to lessen the stress.  One of these is the free gift wrapping service.  When we got to the mall yesterday, the first thing we shopped for were gifts for the kids.  And since those toys can be difficult to wrap at times, we dropped them all off at the gift wrap counter and then shopped around some more for gifts for the older kids. ;-)  Although there weren't a lot of people lined up at the counter, there were lots and lots of bags of toys waiting to get wrapped.

The wrapping paper was pretty enough with the star/snowflake swirly design and with the mandatory department store logo, of course.  We had many color options but chose to stick with red and green because purple and orange won't exactly fit in with the Christmas decor at home.  Now here's where today's project comes in - the tags don't coordinate color-wise with the decor either.  I actually find it a bit strange that the gift wrap (no matter which color it was) had gold undertones in it (the swirls) and yet the white gift card had a silver design on it.  And yes, I confess, I am a bit OC, so as soon as I saw the gift tags, I knew I had to modify/upcycle them.

I just wanted to cover up the silver design (it's a graphic of a gift the a heart-shaped bow on top) on the front cover of the gift tag.  I decided to use the small pieces of wrapping paper that are left over to decorate the cards/tags.  I cut the really cute Santas out and pasted the images on the tag.  For the smaller cut-outs, I either drew a border around the image or used washi tape to frame the image.  A really simple and easy way to get everything to look coordinated.  :-)

Here are the finished gift tags, with no trace of silver and all ready for use.  Btw, I used the term "upcycle" because these tags haven't been used yet.  But had I left them alone, I wouldn't have been able to use them.  And that would be a waste.

Materials:  Wrapping paper scraps (Hallmark), red pen (Galaxy), washi tape (All About Scrapbooking), others - gift tags to recycle.