Preparing your Christmas Cards for Recycling

 Happy New Year and welcome to my first blog of 2022

So January will be all about recycling your Christmas Cards.

To do this we start by sorting out the cards . I put my cards in size order and at this stage I do not cut the backs off, unless they are far too messy to be able to use. Once this is done we can consider the best projects for the size of the card. 

I then decide what projects i am going to make. By deciding before hand it focuses the selection process for the most suitable card for each project.

I have the following projects in mind:

1. Simple squeeze box for sweets on the tree
2. Flat and tall boxes
3. Sticky note holders
4. Card & Envelope to gift bag
5. Mini Brag Book 

Once you have decided on the projects you are going to make with your cards place the cards you think appropriate to that project in a pile. With any you are not sure about decide if there is a part of the card you can use or that can be recycled to make new cards and tags.

Our first project suits most sizes and is very simple so great for beginners or making with the children, who could then use them next year for friends or teacher gifts. 

Take your card front and using your bone-folder or ruler, pull the card along the ruler this helps to curve the card, particularly useful if the card is heavy card stock. Next pull the 2 sides around to meet each other with a lap-over of about 1/2cm at the back,  and squeeze the base together. Unfold and add tape or mark the sides and base for gluing later

If you are going to store for the year unfold the cards at this point and lay flat again to store. Then make a note of the remaining process to place in the bag with the cards

To complete the project when you are ready to use them-

Glue the side together in a rounded manner.

Next glue the bottom edge and pinch together to glue firmly

When dry, pinch the top in the opposite direction to the base

Put a hole in the middle ready to thread the hanging ribbon and decorations. The box is now ready to fill with sweets, chocolates etc and give to friends/ treachery or to hang on the tree. They are excellent pockets of yummyness  to give to little visitors in the holiday season. 

If I was giving them for teacher gifts I would probably fill with Lindt or luxury chocs as a 6 x 6 card  hold 4 Lindt chocolate balls.

 Here is one on my tree 

I usually hang half a dozen on the trees to give to visiting nieces, nephews to take home with them, on the run up to Christmas. 

Well this is the first project of 2022 check back next week for the project 2 

Dee 

Recycling Your Christmas Cards - Coming up in January

 Hi Crafters

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and have time now to sit and contemplate, consider your crafting for next year and making designs in your heads. I find myself doing this when I have free time.

I have planned my blogs for the first half of the year, and the emphasis will be on using what you have in your stash, starting with recycling your Christmas cards. Be sure to save you cards and anyone else’s who are happy for you to recycle theirs. 

The projects will be presented over January and I will try to share with you ways of preparing the projects in a way that will allow you to store your makes for the year until you need them, storage is always a consideration for crafters and so preparing your items to a place where they can be stored easily is useful. This process may require you to make notes on the finalisation of the projects to store with the items so when you come to complete them in October/Nov you have the prompts to finish them well, but it will be worth it. 

So see you all again with these projects the first week of January. 

Dee

Round up of the Year

 Hi Crafters

First let me wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and thank you for stopping by. I realise there are many things you could be doing and blogs you could be visiting so THANK YOU for checking my blog out. This year has seen a good increase in viewers and for that I am very grateful as it gives me the encouragement to continue. 

So this year for crafting has been very messy and looking back at my posts this has been reflected in the mix and maelstrom of my posts. Not just because there has been little structure to the crafting year but also because I like to try my hand at many styles of crafting. I am not sure if this is helpful to viewers but hopefully you can find items you are interested in, although this has made me realise I need to be more careful with headings. 

I have only been able to visit one Craft Show this year (Exeter) and have held one Workshop. In August I attended a Craft Fair, this was not great for me (or many of the other stall holders) which has made me question doing any more Fairs. I am not closing that door completely but I am thinking that I will not do any in 2022, and see if I can find another outlet for items. So in this respect I am looking forward to trying something new. 

For the Blog I would like to tidy it up a little, and have an idea to focus on a particular area for each month  instead of ad hoc posts, with a little more planning for weekly posts. Let’s hope this is a new year resolution that is followed through. If I can plan a little better then my posts will be better structured and photographs to match improved instructions. Please check in  in January to see if this works for you. I would also appreciate feedback at any time as this will tell me if a more structured approach is good for you, the readers. 

So I leave you with a picture of my Christmas Cake this year. Honestly I am no good at cake decorating or icing, so soft icing has been used, meaning the corners are not clean squares but I find ribbon hides a multitude of errors. This is a simple pattern of snowflakes in 3 sizes made from cutters, placed around a circle of icing rolled out and cut using a saucepan lid. 

The cutters used were the push down style:

I am not experienced with these and struggled to remove the snowflake once cut. In the end I found a great system. Press the cutter into the icing and lightly wiggle to cut your pattern. Lift the cutter and clean out the pieces in between the edges, with a cocktail stick, before pushing the handle down. This will not release the shape but a careful pick at the edge with cocktail stick will enable you to get under the shape and go around the edges gently lifting before removing the shape. I then turn these onto a piece of grease proof paper when I I had a selection of all the sizes I placed them around the circle of icing before placing the whole lot onto the centre of the cake. I have placed 3 silver reindeer into the centre of the circle of snowflakes but you could add an iced picture or a selection of Christmas trees or poinsettia, whatever you fancy. I then wrapped the sides in silver ribbon with another fancy ribbon placed in the centre. 

I then used the spare snowflakes to place around the cake stand. I am happy with the finished item, it certainly suits my needs as this cake will sit on the table until Christmas/Boxing Day and once cut will not be around long, and will be probably be shared out to family and neighbours, (if not gone by January) 

Hope you all have a great Christmas and looking forward to crafting in the new year.

Dee

 

Gift Boxes & Bags (A round up of styles)

 Hello Crafters
I have been busy over the last couple of weeks like most of you. Christmas cards are now made and mostly distributed, and the last couple of days have been about parcel wrapping. I have always enjoyed the wrapping almost as much as the giving and like the gift to be a surprise so boxes are useful at this time of year. 
I also make gift bags especially for toiletries, makeup and jewellery as the bags can be used to store the items after opening and hopefully re-used a few time for wrapping. I know some of my card boxes have had multi-use too, so thats good.
Today I thought I would do a round up of a few of the boxes and bags I have made and give you directions  to the particular blog or YouTube video so you can make them yourself.

No1

Recently made, a 2 section box for hand wash and hand cream gift. This I made by measuring the bottles and then making a base to fit the 2 bottles side by side. This particular box needed to be 8” long and 5” wide 2.5” deep. So require a 12 x 12 sheet and I used the Sara signature “Letters from the Heart” paper pad. Just make your box as you would normally and then for the dividing centre part take a piece of card the length of the box and just under  double the width The width of this box is 5” so I make the card 9.5” x 8”. Score the width 2.5”, 4.75”, 7” . Fold the centre score lines to form a double layer and glue together. Then lay into the base of the box. Check the fit (it may need a slight trim either side to fit snuggly into the box base. Then glue the 2 panels to the base of the box.

No2

Best Box Ever

I called this my best box ever as I had learnt to add an extra section to give a professional finish to the inside of the boxes. You can see this in my blog 9 Sept 2021.

No 3

T Light Box 

For some reason I cannot find a blog for this although I cannot believe I have not given you this. It is a simple box to make and can be made from 1 sheet of A4. Simply measure your T-Light and make sure your sections are wide enough. This box has been made with a sheet 21cm  x 28cm by scoring along the 21cm side at 2.5cm,5cm,11cm,13.5cm,19.5cm, and turn to score both sides and 2.5cm and 5cm both sides. This box hold 3 larger T-lights.

No 4 

Self Closing Pouch Box

I made this a long time ago and have several sitting in my craft room stores flat with the extra base pieces and tape in place ready to put together when I need them.

See my blog 22/11/20

No 5 

Small Box with Laminated Lid 

This box was made to demonstrate using pretty papers laminated one side to enhance your box making. It means you can use thinner papers printed on home printers as once they are laminated they have added strength. Perfect for the little jewellery gift box etc. 

Just make your box as you would normally using a sheet of laminated paper for the box lid.

No 6 

Origami Box 

I made 20-30 of these cute origami boxes. The one pictured here is one of my largest and has been made from a 12 x 12 square for the base.

A great gift box for jewellery that can be used by the recipient as a jewellery box as it is pretty enough to be left on the dressing table or sideboard. 

You can see how to make in from my blog on 3/12/2019

There were some that got away - in other words were given to the recipient before i took a photograph for the blog. 
Ingenious Bottle Box that is double skinned and sturdy enough for a bottle and to keep its shape. this was from a Crafters companion CD that came with my A3 Scoreboard 

Triangular Box - So simple to make from a sheet of A4. Ideal for sweets and trinkets. You can find how to make here. 

https://youtu.be/wrIHETxrB-E

Hope you enjoy these and have a go at some of them. 

Old Projects finished at last

Hi Crafters

As promised, here are the projects found when sorting through the craft boxes.

The bottom photograph is a selection of cards, they includes the ones made in my previous blog, some lovely 3D cards from a Create and Craft kit that have vellum inserts. These just needed some greetings added and the 3D Decoupage put together . Then there were some White and silver Christmas cards.

Next were some notelet sets in folders. Each set has 6 DL notelets and envelopes and the file with matching papers, these were all made from the First Edition Eastern Promise paper pad. 

Then I found 2 box cards. These consist of a card that has a box attached which holds 3 scented tea- lights,  both have been made with Christmas papers from the Sara Signature Vintage Christmas Pad, which was my favourite last year, and quite honestly I have not found a pad I like as much this year.

The 3 bigger boxes hold 3 larger scented tea-lights and are perfect as a thank you gift, or thank you for having me gift etc

Then there were several packs of self-sealing boxes. I have kept some as they will be useful for my own gift giving. These pouches are made using 2 pieces of 12 x 12 card stock. Scored in such a way that when put together the top of the box stays together naturally (unless you overfill the box section. You can find several YouTube videos for these, and I have added additional squares of card to line the inside and cover the outside of the base of the box to reinforce

These boxes can be made and stored flat so are very handy to have in your stash. I have three in the giveaway bag.

Lastly there are 4 gift boxes that i had scored and cut out ready to put together, (I think I must have been trying a new template) and as I had some Lidl small chocolate bars I made up the boxes and added 4 of the mini-bars into each , I then filled the top of the box with a Christmas napkin. These require a tag and content description attached to the Christmas ribbon wrapped around the box.

All of these have gone into the bag to be given to a friend who sells them to support a cancer charity. 

Over the next week or so I will continue to look through my boxes and complete anything else I feel may sell well at this time of year, and therefore benefit the charity, at the same time tidy my craft room ready for new projects in the new year. 

I hope this has inspired you to check out the cupboards and see what you have, not quite finished, that you can complete and use. If you look at anything and are not sure if you want to finish it, consider stripping it for using on other projects or be ruthless and throw it out. It will be be good to start the new year free to crack on with new projects and ideas.

Dee

Anna Griffin Christmas

 Hi Crafters 

I have recently purchased some Anna Griffin Dies and am looking forward to making my Christmas cards with them 

The first die for me to try is a lovely Santa Sleigh, the die set has an outline die that makes the base card and then the sleigh die and a set of parcel and tree dies.

This is a sample card from Anna Griffin show 

I do love the Anna Griffin range and have bought several of her dies although I do not usually buy a complete set as I am not ready to spend £80 to £150 on a set of dies, mainly because I know i won’t use them all enough to warrant the spend. One or two from the set to try the designs and some of the accessories, are all I need to ‘have a go’ and not get bored repeating the style. I realise that Christmas is a little different as we all make a lot of cards this time of year, but I like variety so never buy all one range. I am often tempted with  Anna Griffin as it was one of the first designers I purchased when she sold on QVC, but I have so many dies now I really could not make use of 5 or 6 dies in a similar style, so usually just buy my favourite  to try them out,

I am not a quick crafter and working with a die set such as the one shown above will take me some hours. First I have to think  about the design then get out the necessary card and tools and then make up the card.

For this die I needed the large A4  plate so had to get my SIZZIX Plus out the cupboard to cut the base card

Then find the mirror card to make the top layers of the card and sleigh accessories. This took me a couple of hours and then it was time to make dinner. So I still have the base decorations to make and the greeting. Once the card is completed and I am happy with it, I can then get a production line going. I will definitely be adding several of them to my Christmas card pile. 

Here is my version. 

 I am super pleased with it and now I have the basics I can put them together easily. Like most special cards this takes more card than the average amount if card to construct.One standard piece of A4 card 2 pieces of mirror card as well as the patterned card for the holly leaves. And some scraps for the greeting. If you add the cost of the base die spread over 20cards each card would cost about £2 to make. I am not making these to sell, but I throw this in for anyone who does make to sell. 

Obviously if you make lots, and have a good market for them the price per unit goes down, but in my experience and in my area if I am selling cards at £3 or more, my sales would be limited and it would take a few  fairs to sell 40 of the same card. 

All this does not put me off buying more Anns Griffin dies and I am looking foreword to working with the Carousel die I have purchased, and the greeting Impression dies. 

I will post more as I make more. 

Happy Crafting

Dee

More Laminating Projects

 More Laminating Projects
Gift Card holder and Tags 

Hi Crafters

Following on from the other laminating projects mentioned in my previous post, I was asked if `tags could be made using the laminator.

So here are 2 styles of tags

The first has been made laminating a large tag and then adding a laminated pocket on the back to take your greeting 

Put a couple of large tags into a laminating pouch, and put through the machine

Cut around leaving a band around the tag sealing it.

Then with badge size laminating pouches, cut one down by removing 1.5cm from the long and short side, turn inside out and slip into another of the badge laminating pouches,pop through the machine

Cut the top off the badge and this gives you a clear pocket to add your card. add it to one of the tags 

Punch a hole in the top and add an eyelet to take your ribbon.

Here are 3 large Journal tags with one of my  cards on the back showing the pocket for journaling or gifting info.

Next are fun large tags made with 3D decoupage. It is a pad bought from the Range, the pad has papers, and coordinating 3D decoupage for toppers and cards. I laminated the individual pieces of 3D decoupage, fussy cut around the pieces and then layered them onto tags cut from the card with foam pads.

I love making these jazzy tags and they will brighten up any parcel. 

I have added an eyelet and ribbon, so these tags will be sturdy, and hopefully used more than once.

Happy Crafting

Dee