1 Day til Christmas

Well today is the final day for my Christmas Countdown. I have enjoyed showcasing the projects I created to send goodies in to "my girls". Their final item was a gift card and I was running short on time, so I just adhered them into their Christmas card. I didn't take a picture of the cards I sent, so I thought it might be fun to show you all the gifts together in one photo.

2 Days til Christmas

Can you believe there are only 2 more days until Christmas?? Oh my ... I sure hope you all are ready. Today's project is like the altered Kit Kat project that I originally found on Diana Gibb's blog. Here's a link to her tutorial. These are easy to make and they are wonderful to use for little hard to wrap gifts. Today is the only day that all 3 of my ladies received different gifts inside, but as you can guess ... the project contained 2 items (Holly got 2 Studio G clear stamp sets, Amy got 2 packs of Ghirardelli hot chocolate and Joy got 2 Copics in my favorite brown E31).

3 Days til Christmas and Blog Candy Winner

Here is today's Christmas Countdown project, a cute little altered band aid tin. I love Fluffles and this image where he is tangled in Christmas lights cracks me up. Very simple project, it honestly took me 10 minutes to make from start to finish because I already had the images colored. I didn't use sticky strip to adhere the patterned paper because I wanted the ladies to be able to alter it for a future project, so it's more like a belly band and it will slide right off. I put 3 Ghirardelli milk chocolate squares inside.

Number drawn via random.org was:

Random Integer Generator
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4
Timestamp: 2008-12-22 11:58:14 UTC

Congrats to Stephanie!!

4 Days til Christmas

Today's project is a Triangle Treat bag that Tracy Durcan posted on the Scor Pal website here. These bags are so cute and pretty easy to make. Mine has 4 pieces of Hodgepodge Hardware inside. It has been so much fun finding projects that worked for the various gifts I wanted to send in my Christmas Countdown packages. Maybe, just maybe, one day I'll actually design a new box or bag. But until then, I just keep my eyes open and find those developed by the various stamping geniuses (is that even a word??) out there.

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5 Days til Christmas

Here is today's count down to Christmas project, a mini pizza box. These things are so stinkin' cute. They were originally designed by Jen over at I {heart} 2 stamp and here's a link to the information posted for TLC189 over at SCS, including a pattern. I based my design on a card I did for a sketch challenge that InStyle Stamps had earlier this month. I made this box the very next day since I had all of the supplies on my crafting table. Inside is 5 different candies from a Holiday Mix bag of bite sized candy bars ... they fit perfectly inside. I will definitely be making more of these cute boxes, in fact I'll be designing Valentine themed boxes to make with my hostess club.

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7 Days til Christmas

Okay, so after some non-edible goodies, let's get back to some sweet treats ... lol. For this project, I made this cute little one sheet bag I found in Sharon's gallery on SCS here. The link to a video tutorial on the 3-D Design Challenge blog is here. They have 7 Reese's miniatures in them. Chocolate and peanut butter, my absoulute favorite combination. I'm so glad someone put their chocolate in someone's peanut butter ... or was it the other way around? Okay, I'm being silly and probably dating myself from that old commerical reference.

8 Days til Christmas

Here are 2 more Christmas projects I created. Note that all the Countdown to Christmas projects were sent to 3 special ladies: Holly (who is the upline of my Orphaned Demo group on SCS and who had a birthday this past Saturday ... Hi Holly), Amy (whose name I got for a sister swap with my Orphan Demo Group... Hi Amy) and my ACTUAL sister Joy (who I rarely send cards or projects to ... isn't that sad ... poor Joy ... hopefully the box of goodies you got makes up for it, sis).

The first project is a little heart tin from PTI. All I did was tie some ribbon around it. What's inside?? Well, believe it or not ... it's not candy ... I put some cute little heart shaped buttons and brads in the tin. I figured the ladies could use them for upcoming Valentines Day projects. I didn't embellish the tins because I want them to be able to use them for their own projects. Besides, they're pretty cute with just ribbon on them ... don't you think?

They also received an altered pillow box. I got these at Target, they were in the wedding section and there's like 50 in a box for $13. I like that you can stamp on them. However, I just created a removable belly band, so they can be altered later. Inside is 8 yards of ribbon ... I figured you can never have too much ribbon.

Countdown to Christmas

I'm glad you stopped by today because I wanted to share some Christmas projects I recently created. The adorable little goodie baglet (top left in the picture) is based on a project I saw on Lauren Meader's blog here. That girl amazes me with her altering abilities. She now has her own line of templates that you can buy at Papertrey, so go check them out. Anyway, Lauren's baglet was the perfect way to show off these yummy little pretzel treats. The paper is from the DCWV Christmas Glitter Stack. The recipe I used for the treats is here. Let me tell you, these are the perfect blend of salty and sweet. And since M&Ms are usually available for all possible seasons, these are a great "go to" gift for the special people in your life.

Next, I ran a small glassine bag through my Cuttlebug using my snowflakes embossing folder. I got the idea from one of Nichole Heady's projects a while back, but I don't know exactly when it was posted. Anyway, I tied some ribbon around it and added a cute snowman image layered with coordinating cardstock with my SU circle punches. Easy as pie and I love how they turned out. Inside there are some chocolate covered Peanut Butter Ritz Bits crackers. They are pretty yummy, but you can certainly tell this was the first time I've ever hand dipped in melted chocolate. Since they turned out sort of ugly I doubt I'll make them again. I added a small amount of shortening to the milk chocolate morsels I used, but the mixture got thicker and thicker and the crackers turned out uglier and uglier. If anyone has any suggestions on what might make it work better, please let me know.

And the final project pictured is 10 sheets of Christmas themed stamped images. I packaged them in a glassine bag that I stamped with green stazon (which you can't see in this photo).