Tag Archives: Christmas in July

Cupcakes and paper wrapped chocolates

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in Cupcakes and other tasty treats, Uncategorized

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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.

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Here are our holly cupcakes:

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And one of our snowflake cupcakes:

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Next up – some paper wrapped chocolates!

photo-5I 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

 

Rudolph sweet treats

22 Thursday Aug 2013

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

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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:

photo-4Here’s a closer look:

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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!

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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:

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

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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)

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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!)

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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!

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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 in 3D projects, Home decorating, Uncategorized

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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:

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(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:

20130815_165235 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!

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

photo-8Did 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 in 3D projects, Curly label, Home decorating, Petite curly label, Punches, Uncategorized

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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!

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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 …

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

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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.

photo-3I then centred the black strip and stuck it down:

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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!

photo-7I stuck the buckle over the belt and “ta da” – a Santa napkin ring!  They looked very cute all lined up together.

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

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

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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.

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

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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:

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

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

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

photo-5Tip: 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:

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Stick on the trim and you’re done!

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

photo-4They looked really cute all lined up together!

photo-3Hopefully this might inspire you for some Christmas craft a little later in the year.

Thanks for reading!

Caro

Decorated easel card

18 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by in 3D / pop up, Cards, Christmas, Uncategorized

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Hi

A little while ago I posted a tutorial showing you how to make easel cards.   While I was doing the blog post I made a card to show you the steps, but then had to figure out how to decorate it.  It was left a little half finished, like this:

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All dressed up and nowhere to go!

Today I wanted to show you how the card ended up.   And randomly, it ended up a table decoration for a Christmas in July celebration!  (yes, in August …)

Every year we have a Christmas in July celebration with some close friends.   This year July was just too busy for me for work so we arranged to have Christmas in July in August.  We live near the beach so we decided vaguely on a ‘Christmas in July at the beach’ theme.  That does kind of defeat the purpose of Christmas in July, but whatever!

So here you go … my “Christmas in July in August at the Beach” table decoration easel card!

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The blank card was sitting on my desk for several days – and then inspiration struck.  It must have been all that red!   It’s a little bit silly/random, but that is what Christmas in July (in August!) is all about 🙂

Caro

PS Did you notice the cute little Santa hat?  Stay tuned and I’ll show you how to make it.  It took me a while to figure out how to make it so I should share the love!