Gift tag of the year

Presenting this year's Christmas gift tag (I make an effort to make my own every year)!

Lawn fawn (I had to be careful inking since I combined 2 stamps to make my fairy wear a santa hat!) and All Night Media stamps (wow I think I've had this All Night Media set forever!), Versacolour stamp pad, my trusty colour pencils, cheap card stock and sequins chains from the local $2 store. I quite like the outcome! What d'yall think?

Crafting update

Have been busy at work (and hoping it pays off!) and have been trying my darndest to do bits of crafting here and there. Sadly not much time to tat (so for people looking for a tatting update, you can exit right about here).

 

I'm still one of those "old foggies" who like to have physical diaries... but this year I really couldn't find one that caught my eye... So I made my own with a S$1.90 dotted Muji notebook. Then made a fabric book cover (with extra pockets!) to "protect it" - first book cover I've made using the same concept of the card holders that I shared in a previous post.

Next on to Christmas!!!

This project was inspired by a Christmas gift that I'm going to share later in this post. What you're looking at is a S$3.00 A4 sized calico bag covered with dinosaur stamps (from lawn fawn) in black Versacraft ink. I love it! Have I mentioned I love dinosaurs... and I was inspired to do this because of this gift....

My boss's daughter appears to be a creative little gal... so I decided to put together a "decorate a bag" kit. With a budget of S$30.00 (about US$21.00) I put together a varied collection of items including 2 blank calico bags, fabric paint, fabric crayons, lace, fabric scraps, craft glue, cover buttons, buttons, sequins, plastic gems and more! And it all convenient comes in a plastic carrying case! I'm rather pleased with this gift idea - I think I got a lot of things in there in my budget and I managed to destash a little as well... When I compared this to US30.00 kits that I saw online for sale... I thought I did good! Hoping the little girl enjoys it (and just in case she wasn't sure what to do, I'm even including an idea sheet!).

 

On the topic of Christmas, I have a habit of trying to "personalize" my store bought cards - this year I'm going simple with sequins! Who can resist a little bling =).

After fiddling about and realizing some things didn't work too well I am quite pleased with the outcome.

Just a little bit more!

Thought of a way to incorporate some tatting!

Any guesses?

Slow but steady progress

Colouring in the additional bits...

Punching out gift tags and "texturing" them (so it doesn't look so plain...)!

Step 2! A leeeettle bit more!

Scrimped some time to work on my hopefully soon to be gift tags.

Added bits to make each robot different... and stamped a couple more bits to add on later.

And silly me, forgot to identify that the above are from Lawn Fawn's Beep Boop Birthday and Penny Black's Margaret Sherry Garden Critters [I love Margaret Sherry].

Still asking for good referral sites!

No time no time!

I haven't had much time to craft at all. In between work and the stuff I now do outside work, I haven't touched a shuttle (sadly) in ages!

I had a rough weekend and really needed to get in some crafting to settle frazzled and strained nerves. 

So I stamped and coloured (to make gift tags and cards for upcoming birthdays). 

My colouring skill aren't great and I read a few webbies yesterday about how to go about colouring in stamps. Save for one site that was giving pointed on shading and shadows I didn't really find anything instructive.

So. How do they look? Does anything have good websites to recommend about card and gift tag making using stamped images? Or colouring? Do share!

Hope be able to actually finish the tags and hopefully will update and or show the finished product. Wondering whether I will be able to sneak in some small tats in the tags...

Experimental failure?

Was playing around with buttons trying to de stash and make a gift card at the same time

Methinks I was not quite successful :( I can't decide whether I am just not good at it, the idea was flawed to start with or I'm using colours that are too strong for the background :( 

Help? 

More colouring... Well kinda

I'm not much of a drawer sadly but sometimes I do try.

The sister's been a little bit down lately and she recently lamented on Facebook about how she misses getting real mail or "snail mail" (not flyers or worse... BILLS). So I thought I'd cheer her up. 

I whipped out my colour pencils and some drawing block... 

Meet Sammy the Snail! (Get it? Snail mail lol) 

The card is about the size of a coaster. The images above show both sides of the card. One side with a hand drawn and coloured snail and the other side with some scrapbook paper and felt letters that I cut out my hand. I tried to make it look stamp like - did I succeed? 

Shhh... Don't tell her! It's a surprise! 

Quickie craft

Somehow rather pleased with this gift bag I did for a friend's birthday.

Inexpensive pink striped paper bag (that I bought in a pack of like 100), bits of scrap book paper, bits of coloured and origami paper, glitter glue, and my stamp and embossing tools.

Hope he likes it! And the present it will contain! 

This year's gift tags!

Found an awesome origami pattern for bows!

I'm so using it this season's

gift tags! (I made them with my collection of thrift store origami papers!)

Check out the pattern here! 

http://helenmade.blogspot.sg/2011/08/paper-bow-tutorial.html?m=1

Jazzing up my Christmas cards.

I like to "personalize" my Christmas cards. I feel odd just buying cards at the store and just writing "Dear xxx "preprinted Christmas greeting" from me"

I don't have time to make all my cards from scratch. So I like to add "extras". 

This is what my cards look like this year. 

Used foil leftover from my costume making (from my friend's wedding earlier this year) to make a windowed "snow bank" and added a stamped tree (there are 4 different trees). I like the effect :)