Lion birthday card

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 1 3/4 circle, 3/4 inch circle, Blossom, General occasion, Kids cards, Masculine, Owl, Tutorial

Tags

Birthday card, Brisbane Lions, lion, punch art

The other day I showed you a gift wrapped present for a friend’s 40th birthday. Today I’m going to show you the card I made him. This friend is a big Brisbane Lions fan – so of course my little man decided that he needed to have a lion card made in Brisbane Lions colours. A creative challenge for someone who has no idea about AFL!

First step in the creative process: Google to see what the Brisbane Lions logo looks like!

Second: figure out the Brisbane Lions colours. I went with Pacific Point, Crushed Curry and Cajun Craze from Stampin’ Up!

Third: figure out how to make a lion card!! I was inspired by this card by Terry Blais. This is my version:

Here’s how I made the lion:

Step 1: punch 2 flowers from the Blossom Punch in Cajun Craze. Then punch out 3 petals from the Blossom Punch in Crushed Curry. The Cajun Craze pieces will be the mane and the Crushed Curry will be the lion’s paws.

Step 2: punching pieces for the face. I used a 1 3/4″ circle for the face and 2 x 3/4 inch circles for the cheeks. I cut the eyes and nose using the Owl builder punch.

Step 3: assembling the lion!! I stuck the 2 Cajun Craze pieces together using dimensionals so the second layer of the mane had some height. I then stuck the 1 3/4 circle on top and stuck on the pieces for the face. I added goggley eyes for a bit of extra cuteness. You could also use black eye centres from the owl punch, or even just draw black dots with a pen.

Step 4: adding the lions paws. I cut the centre petal out of the Crushed Curry Blossom Punch piece like this:

This worked well as 2 lion paws.

Here is the finished lion:

I used a sponge dipped in Cajun Craze ink to dab around the paws and face for a little extra colour. A black pen for the whiskers and freckles and I was done.

I matted a Happy Birthday greeting in Cajun Craze on a Crushed Curry background and put it on an angle so it looked like the lion was holding a sign with its paws.

I think the birthday boy thought it was very cute (even though not exactly your traditional 40th birthday card!)

Thanks for reading

Caro

Golden anniversary card

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 3D / pop up, Anniversary, Cards, Modern Label, Small Heart, Sweet treat cups

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anniversary card, sweet treat cups

The other day I showed you some Rudolph the red nosed reindeer decorations I made using Stampin’ Up! sweet treat cups. Today I wanted to show you another card using sweet treat cups – a card I made for some very dear friends’ golden wedding anniversary last year.

I used gold card stock and ink and Very Vanilla for the stamped image. The tag used the Modern Label punch and a greeting from the Teeny Tiny Sentiments set. I used my Small Heart punch to punch out lots of little gold love hearts for the inside of the cup.

This card is made with retired products (Sweetheart stamp set for the flower and heart border as well as the heart treat cups), but you could make a similar card using the round sweet treat cups as a flower.

I’m looking forward to someone having a major anniversary soon so I can make this card again!

Thanks for reading

Caro

Giftwrapping

26 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in Gift tags & wrapping, Labels collection

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

40th birthday party, favourite things, gift cards, gift tag, gift wrapping

One of my favourite things to do is wrap a present. I don’t know why, but something about choosing colours and playing with ribbon is very therapeutic. And we are all about making things pretty here at Caro’s Pretty Things!

We recently went to a close friend’s 40th birthday party. He is just a little bit into red wine (understatement of the year!) so of course we bought him a very nice bottle of red wine for his present.

Here’s the present all wrapped up.

I used my Labels collection framelits for the base of the gift tag and printed out an image ‘Keep Calm and Drink Red Wine’ I found on the web. This was tied on with Bravo Burgundy ribbon from Stampin’ Up! (the same colour as the die cut label) – which seemed rather appropriate given the gift.

Hopefully he’ll enjoy the wine as much as I enjoyed wrapping it!

Scallop envelope gift box

25 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 3D projects, Boxes, Dies, Gift tags & wrapping, Scallop envelope, Tutorial

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gift boxes, scallop envelope die

Today I wanted to show you a little gift box I made for a present. Anyone who has been reading this blog lately would know we recently had a Christmas in July (in August!) party at our house. We had a Secret Santa and one of the recipients loves orange (he says it’s his signature colour!). I found some orange travel toiletries and wanted to make a little box to present them in.

I made this little box using the Stampin’ Up! scallop envelope die.

You will need 4 pieces cut from the scallop envelope die to make the box. You will also need one piece of card stock for the base of the box measuring 8 cm x 8 cm.

Step 1: identify the ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ of your box. I like to use the scalloped edge on the outside. If you’d like to do the same, fold each piece at the score lines like this:

Step 2: cut one side flap from each envelope. It doesn’t matter which side you choose – just make sure that you choose the same side on each piece!

Step 3: stick a row of sticky strip (double sided tape) along the outside of the remaining flaps, like this:

Step 4: stick the 4 pieces together to make a long row, as shown. I could only fit 3 in the picture but you need to stick all 4 together in a row. I also like to glue down the scallop edges, but I have also made the box leaving them as ‘flaps’.

Step 5: fold in the base flaps to make the bottom of the box and stick the remaining sides together. Glue the square of card stock to the base for extra strength. I also glued some ribbon around the top for extra decoration.

This is also a great sized box for storing things on your desk. Post it notes fit really well!

If you don’t have the scallop envelope die you could try making a box using 4 of a normal envelope template. There are lots of printable templates available on the web.

Thanks for reading!

Caro

PS: I know I have seen tutorials on the web for this box but I can’t recall where I saw them first so apologies for not crediting (please ping me if you know and I’ll happily edit this post!)

Cupcakes and paper wrapped chocolates

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in Cupcakes and other tasty treats, Uncategorized

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Christmas in July, cupcakes, Hersheys, Wrapped chocolates

Hello!

This is my last post showing you things I made for our recent Christmas in July in August party. I promise! Today I’m going to show you cute stuff we made to eat.

First up – some Christmas themed cupcakes! My son and I had a ball decorating these. He made all the red berries and painted on the water to glue the decorations to the top of the cupcakes.

Here are our holly cupcakes:

And one of our snowflake cupcakes:

Next up – some paper wrapped chocolates!

I have seen so many blogs from the US showing papercraft ideas and presents with Hershey’s chocolates wrapped in DSP – and I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making some of those beautiful creations. And I don’t even like chocolate! I was standing in line at the Reject Shop the other day – and what did I spy but some Hershey’s chocolates. That was the first time I’ve seen them in Australia.

I ran out of time to do anything too fancy with them, but I did use up some scraps of old Jolly Holly DSP I had lying around to make them pretty Christmas chocolates. I cut strips 3cm x 7.5cm. This meant you could still see the foil and a little of the wrapper. Next time I’d probably do 3.5 x 7.5cm. 7.5 cm is a really handy length as you can cut four pieces from a single strip from a 12 x 12 ” sheet of DSP.

Now that I know you can get these in Australia I might have to revisit some of those blog posts!

Thanks for reading this one 🙂

Caro

Making eyes (at me!)

23 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in Uncategorized

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Yesterday I showed you the Rudolph decorations I made for our recent winter Christmas weekend.

Today I wanted to show you how I made the eyes.

At first I used my large oval punch, cut 2 white ovals and 1 black oval, cut the black oval in half and stuck the black bits over the white bit. These looked quite fine, but a little too small in proportion to the face (made from a top note die). So I used my extra large oval punch to cut the white and the large oval to cut the black, and trimmed down the black section.

Step one: Cut 2 white extra large ovals and 2 black large ovals. Place the black ovals over the white until the proportions look right. Stick the black down with the rest of the oval hanging over the bottom.

Step 2: Flip the eyes over so you can see where to trim the black.

Step 3: Turn back over and voila – eyes!

At this point I also use a white pencil or Signo pen to add a little white line in the black. I forgot to take a photo of that step, but you can see this detail in the photo above.

Anyway, I hope that gives you some ideas as I found working out the eyes a little more ‘fiddly’ than I’d expected!

Thanks for reading

Caro

Rudolph sweet treats

22 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 1 3/4 circle, Big Shot, Dies, Sweet treat cups, Tasteful Trim, Top Note, Tutorial

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christmas in July, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, sweet treat cups

You’ll have seen from my last few posts I may have gone a little overboard on the decorations for our Christmas in July (in August) weekend? I have another type to share with you today!

As part of my “research” I came across this Rudolph ornament by Marie Shaughnessy using Stampin’ Up’s sweet treat cups. My husband also bought me some red heart shaped lollies during the week, which got me thinking of red noses and Rudolph and what I could do.

I ended up making a table centre piece of Rudolph’s in a vase, with lollies for each guest to eat:

Here’s a closer look:

The faces were made of a Top Note die cut out of Soft Suede card stock. I cut 2 for each Rudolph.

I was hunting around for things that could work as antlers and thought about using my Tasteful Trim die. When I cut it out however, I actually thought that the spaces between the cut out trim might actually work better as reindeer antlers than the trim itself!

I cut up little bits of the trim and stuck them to the back of the card piece I was using for the front of the face:

They all looked a little different. I think the one on the bottom left probably looked the closest to real antlers?

I then stuck on eyes* and cut a hole with my 1 3/4 inch circle punch (which is the size that perfectly matches the sweet treat cups)

Next step was to stick the sweet treat cup on the front and then turn it over and fill up with lollies. (Tip: make sure you stick the cup on really well. Run your fingers around it a few times sticking it down. I let my little boy stick a couple on and they needed to be restuck later!)

I then stuck another top note on the back of the first one to hold the lollies in – and ta da, some Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeers!

Please contact me if you’d like to get your hands on some sweet treat cups and try some of these for yourselves 🙂

Caro

* I will show you how to make the eyes in a separate post. I played around with a few different methods so I’ll save you the time 🙂

Christmas place mats

21 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 3D projects, Home decorating, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas in July, Happy Hour, ideas for laminating machines, papercraft, place mats, stampinup

The last few days I’ve shown you some of the decorations I made for our recent Christmas in July (in August!) celebration with some friends. Today I wanted to show you some place mats I made:

(sorry, the photo is a little crooked)

I used the Happy Hour stamp set from Stampin’ Up! for the details. I used a gold Versamark ink pad for the drink cups. I hand cut the candy cane and stuck it on the drink. I used my Stampin’ Write markers (Garden Green and Riding Hood Red) to colour the holly stamp before stamping it on the side of the glass. Here’s a close up of the images:

I used an A4 piece of card stock as the red backing (using up some retired Riding Hood Red card stock) and a white piece of A4 where I’d cut 2cm off one long and one short side (ie, to get a 1cm border around all 4 sides). I then stuck the white and red card together and ran them through a laminator to make the place mat. They looked really cute all lined up together!

Here’s a picture of the table with all the decorations on it:

Did you notice the stars in the soup bowls? We used a star cookie cutter to make toast stars to float on top of the soup. (The reverse pieces of bread with star holes were fun to fill with scrambled eggs for brunch the next day!)

I had a great time making all the decorations and we had such a fun dinner 🙂

Thanks for reading

Caro

PS There may be a few more Christmas craft details to show you – stay tuned!

Papercraft napkin rings

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in 3D projects, Curly label, Home decorating, Petite curly label, Punches, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas in July, napkin ring, papercraft, Santa belt

Hello!

The last two posts I’ve showed you some of the craft I did for our recent delayed Christmas in July party. Today I wanted to show you some more table decorations – this time Santa napkin rings!

This idea came about when we were in a Christmas shop looking for Christmas crackers for our party. I was looking at a Santa belt decoration and thought that it would make a great napkin ring. I then went home and pulled out my punches to see whether I could come up with something similar.

The starting point was trying to figure out how to make the belt. I tried my square punches and the decorative label punch but they weren’t quite right. I then hit on the petite curly label and the curly label punch and they were perfect (all punches are by Stampin’ Up!).

A little while ago I showed you how to make a frame with a scallop punch and circle punch. I used the same technique here to make Santa’s belt. First, punch the petite curly label punch …

… and then punch around it with the curly label punch:

And hey presto – Santa’s belt buckle made out of glittery glimmer paper!

I then had to figure out how to make Santa’s shirt and belt. I started out with a napkin and my pile of Riding Hood Red offcuts to see what width of red looked right with the buckle in the middle. I ended up with a red piece 7.5cm wide and 21cm long. After a bit of fiddling around trying to work out whether to thread the black through the belt or not, I decided it would look best (and be easier!!) to just stick the buckle over the top of the belt. So the black strip for the belt needed to be slightly narrower than the buckle, which worked out to be 2.5cm wide and 21 cm long.

I then centred the black strip and stuck it down:

I then folded a napkin into thirds and wrapped the card around so it was just slightly loose and stuck it down. I used both sticky strip and snail adhesive to make sure it stayed stuck!

I stuck the buckle over the belt and “ta da” – a Santa napkin ring! They looked very cute all lined up together.

I think something like this could also work as a belly band on a gift card holder or gift box as well. Perhaps just the black belt and buckle wrapped around a red box/card?

I must say I’d never thought of making a napkin ring out of card stock before! Funny how inspiration strikes in the strangest places. I’m now starting to think about ribbons, flowers, brads … I need to throw some more dinner parties to come up with new decorating ideas!

Thanks for reading.

Caro

Punch art Santa hat

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Carolyn in Boho Blossoms, Christmas, Extra Large Oval, Punches, Scallop oval, Tutorial, Word Window

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas in July, punch art, Santa hat

Yesterday I showed you my Christmas in July (in August!) themed easel card with a cute little punch art Santa hat.

I got the idea for the Santa hat from a blog called Denise’s workshop. It took me a little while to figure out how to make the hat using the punches I have (all Stampin’ Up!) so I thought I’d show you how I made it.

First I punched out a red oval from the Large Oval punch:

I then used the Word Window punch to cut out a section on an angle to make the shape for the curve of the hat:

Next I cut a white pom pom out of a flower from the Boho Blossoms punch:

Then I cut out the fur trim on the hat from the Scallop Oval punch, and trimmed across the top:

I stuck the pom pom onto the hat with a mini glue dot and trimmed the bottom of the oval for the hat:

Tip: see how the cut where I trimmed off the bottom of the oval is not straight? I found when I cut straight across the bottom of the oval the hat itself ended up looking a little ‘wonky’. After a bit of trial and error I discovered it was better to hold the ‘fur trim’ across the hat and just judge by eye where the right spot to cut was. Each time I made a hat it was a bit different, as each time I’d punched the Word Window section at a slightly different angle.

This picture shows you what I mean – judge how the hat should look and then figure out where to trim the bottom of the oval:

Stick on the trim and you’re done!

I decided to use these as place settings for our Christmas lunch.

They looked really cute all lined up together!

Hopefully this might inspire you for some Christmas craft a little later in the year.

Thanks for reading!

Caro

Caro's Pretty Things

~ My papercraft blog

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Lion birthday card

Golden anniversary card

Giftwrapping

Scallop envelope gift box

Cupcakes and paper wrapped chocolates

Making eyes (at me!)

Rudolph sweet treats

Christmas place mats

Papercraft napkin rings

Punch art Santa hat

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