Christmas Gift Wrapping 101

At last night's Christmas Stamp-a-Stack Gift Tag Class I put together a small Christmas display showing some Christmas projects as well as some of the fabulous gift box/gift wrapping solutions!

Christmas is now within reach and we are all starting to scramble to get our Christmas gifts together in preparation for the big day. I don't know about you but I have a slight obsession with making sure my gift presentation is TOP NOTCH!! I am not a fan of busy, patterned, cartoonish type wrapping papers. Yuck! You couldn't pay me to put that kind of wrapping paper on my presents! I love my presents to look a certain way and Stampin' Up! offers SO MANY options to help with this, especially if you are entering "awkward shaped present" situations. There are boxes of all shapes & sizes, muslin bags, paper bags etc. And then of course you can make your own wrapping paper! But there is no point in me just talking about this. Let me show you!! 

The Extra Large Gift Box comes in a pack of 3 Kraft boxes. They are FOOD SAFE! Boxes are 11.1 x 15.2 x 15.2cm. The pack of 3 costs $6.95 which breaks down to $2.30 each. Comes flat packed.

The Decorative Window Gift Box comes in a pack of 6 Kraft boxes. They are FOOD SAFE! Boxes are 3.8 x 10.2 x 10.2cm. The pack of 6 boxes costs $8.95 which breaks down to $1.50 each. Comes flat packed.

The Kraft Gift Boxes are the little sister version of the XL boxes above, same design, just smaller! They come in a pack of 4 boxes. They are FOOD SAFE!  Boxes are 9 x 9 x 6.4cm. The pack of 4 boxes costs $4.95 which breaks down to $1.23 each. Comes flat packed.

Tag a Bag Gift Boxes come in a pack of 8 Kraft boxes with matching acetate sleeves that the box slides into. They are FOOD SAFE! Boxes are 17.5 x 5.4 x 6.4cm. The box of 8 boxes costs $11.95 which breaks down to $1.49 each. Comes flat packed.

These gift bags come in a pack of 10. They are FOOD SAFE! Bags are 12.7 x 21cm. The bags cost $6.95 which breaks down to $0.69 each. 

SIDE NOTE: Both the Tag a Bag Boxes, & Tag a Bag Gift Bags come in bundles with the Tag a Bag Accessory Kit below.

The Tag a Bag Accessory Kit comes with 10 large base tags, 10 medium builder tags, 3 colours of twine (6.1m each), 10 mini clothespins, 40 Stampin' Dimensionals & 5 self adhesive strips. The colours of this kit are Bermuda Bay, Crushed Curry, Gumball Green, Smoky Slate & Tangerine Tango. The bundle prices give you a 15% saving.

 Prices:

- If you buy the kit on it's own: $13.95 

- Buy the Tag a Box Bundle (Boxes & Kit) $21.95

- Buy the Tag a Bag Bundle (Bags & kit) $17.75

The Mini Muslin bags come in a pack of 8 bags. They are 100% cotton with a drawstring closure. They are STAMPABLE! They measure 10.2 x 14cm. The pack of 8 bags costs $16.95 which breaks down to $2.11 each. 

These are all the gift box/bag options they have available! Now did you notice I mentioned wrapping paper in the beginning? I'm sure you are wondering why Stampin' Up! would be supplying rolls of wrapping paper. Well they don't, but this is where your imagination comes into play. You take yourself to the shops and buy a roll of white, or brown wrapping paper. This is your blank canvas!! Pull out your stamp sets, your ink pads, and off you go! Making your own wrapping paper is fun and super dooper easy. Here is some wrapping paper I have made over the last couple of months. 

And then some made by my sister...

And my awesome friend...

So as you can see the possibilities are endless!! 

If you would like to order any gift wrapping options or anything else and you would like to receive the items before Christmas, I must place your order before 11th December to ensure it arrives in time!! Please let me know if there is anything you would like!  

As promised, punches etc.

So tonight I'm home alone.  Husby is gaming with mates.  I've already cleaned the house head to toe, and now have the laundry processing.  I was feeling a tad bored so decided I should actually update my blog properly.  I have been unforgivably slack since I got home from the USA.  I guess I broke my 'blogging habit' and even feel a tad disinterested.  But I am going to change that!

Here are the punches I bought in the USA that I have been promising photos of for a month now.

My favourite is the top white one, which is unfortunately a Martha Stewart punch (that woman annoys the crappola out of me).  It is just so delightfully doily-ish.  And the bottom smaller one was a must buy.  Stampin Up have stopped making their version of this punch and they are such a good punch to have so I was determined to get this one! (luckily for me it was on clearance for $8).

I have been doing plenty of other little things too.  Like making cookies, and putting them in bags with sweet little gift tags (that I got husby to help with since they were for his work mates!).

I also did up some choccie bags for my work mates.

And I did up the gift tags for the gifts we (me and the other leaders) gave to our girls at church.  (They actually took FOREVER cause those snowflakes are all embossed and I had to do 17 tags!)

Let me see, what else have I been up to...  ahh yes, introducing my Waterproof camera to the pool :)

The niece - Brooklyn

The husby

And I've also been brave trusting and teaching my 3 year old nephew how to use the camera - in and out of the water. (he still has issues with covering the lens with his fingers)

He just LOVES having ownership of the camera.  I can't not trust him, he's too cute.

Two day's after Christmas is my sister's birthday.  I have always made an extra effort to make it special and non-Christmassy.  So the night before I madly took down all my decorations except for the Christmas tree, cause I simply could not be bothered :)  And then I set the table...

  ...with my dinner set I bought as a 16 year old for my glory box!!  It took me almost 10 years to use it but I'm glad I finally did cause it's such a sweet little set.  Sad that it's only a setting for 4 though.

I even did little place settings to make it sweet.

She also got the bestest birthday cake ever...

I also am now the proud owner of SIX SU ink pads.  To some this is no biggie.  For me this is amazing.  No more cheap nasty ink pads from the $2 shop.

Most of you should know what I got for Christmas.  A sewing machine & overlocker/serger.  Santa was VERY good to me this year.  So I broke the girls out of their boxes yesterday and am working on re-organising my craft space to make room for them.

Now, I must warn you that I am strange.  I have to name everything.  And I need your help with this one.  I don't have a name for my sewing machine yet.  What does she look like to you?

There are rules to naming things though.  It has to be catchy and fun.  Not dorky.

Luckily my overlocker has a name.  Edna the Elna.

I am currently off work for a week for the Christmas/New Year's period and I've been trying to use that time to get the annoying jobs done around the house.  So I cleaned out the wardrobes, and put skinny clothes into Space Bags, scrubbed the hell out of my bathroom... and organised my fabrics!!  Yay!  A friend of mine gave me these fantastic drawers - she was going to throw them out!!  Husby is going to cut me a piece of wood to put on top so I can stack more crap on top of it hah!

And last but not least, this week I went over my friend's house.  She is a Stampin Up demonstrator so has ALLL the goodies.  Every so often I'll go over and we'll just make cards and things all day long.  It's fun and she always gives me great ideas.  Unfortunately this time round my brain was on holidays and had a bit of a creative block, so my first card design was a little boring...

But I got my brain into gear for the second design...

I love this card.. and did you notice the brads?

I bought them off Craftumi before Christmas.  They are just so adorable!

Well, I think that pretty much brings me up to speed.  I was thinking this afternoon I might wing making a quilt for a pram.  I don't know who it's for, but I need to give this sewing machine a work out and get a feel for it.  So I might just cut up some random bits of fabric and sew them together and see what I end up with!

Tomorrow night I'm off to a 60th for New Years Eve... what are your plans?

Have a fun night and don't go to bed too early!

Midnight Madness, YoYo Trees and a NEW Headband

#16
I have a few things to report on, but I will be careful and not put all my goodness into one post, cause for all I know I could have a creativity block tomorrow and have nothing to blog about.

Firstly, posting on my blog everyday for Blogtoberfest is really hard.  I used to post only twice or so a week.  It is starting to hurt my brain.

Secondly, I have actually got a few things done over the past few days.  I'll share a few.

Midnight Madness
Every year my church puts on a Christmas Craft Night.  They always put it on super early BEFORE the Christmas rush, and of course to allow time to finish the projects so they can be used at Christmas time.  Last night was this said night.  It goes from 6pm till Midnight - thus it's called Midnight Madness.  I only signed up for 3 craft classes last night.  In years gone I've done up to 6, so it was a quiet night for me.  I made Christmas cards and gift tags.

They were all relatively easy and as you can see, they're very effective.  Geez Kristy (my Stampin Up Lady) is clever.  You should check out her blog, she is doing Christmas gift ideas every week for 12 weeks up until Christmas (you receive the tutorials if you sign up to her email list).  She is getting married soon and I have to try and think of what to get her as the engagement present.  I think she's gonna need storage for her GIGANTOR stash of SU goodies :)

Next I did the Wooden Ginger Bread Men.  These little men made me a crazy woman.  They don't look like much.  But LET ME TELL YOU.  They hurt my brain in a big way last night.

I had instructions, but they weren't relevant because all the supplies they used in the tutorial, were not available on the night.  So I had to freestyle it, and that doesn't always work with me.  So I open my little bag of 5 wooden gingerbread men.  I sanded the edges because they were a little splintery (is that a word?).

Then I needed to make all the edges brown.  There was no brown paint, so I had to sponge it with ink.  It took over an hour to do this.  Holy hell, my patience went out of the window with those little guys in the inking process.  BUT I PERSEVERED and ate lots of kabana and drunk lots of delicious lemonade to keep my spirits in order.  (And I realise at this stage I should have photographed all this as I went so you'd have instructions ((unlike me when I did it)) on how to make them yourself, but oh well).

Then I chose my papers.  As part of the pack that I bought to make them, I could choose 3 double sided patterned papers.  I had to like 5 of the 6 sides of paper.  So I picked my papers and traced the men on the papers and cut them out.  Then using PVA (or you could use Mod Podge, but PVA was what was provided) I glued the paper down to the men.  I then trimmed the excess paper overhang on the men, which was incredibly annoyingly fiddly.  Followed by sanding the edges to give it the rustic feel and to neaten up the look.  It is a great effect but of course took an hour to do all 5.  By this stage it was close to midnight and I hadn't even started to think about decorating them with embellishments etc.  Oh and did I mention I had fluid retention in my hands?  Yeah, it felt AWESOME!! haha!!

Then disaster struck.  But I didn't know it until it was too late.  I had one TINY picture to use as a guide for decorating.  In the picture the men had faces drawn on.  So I copied.  After I had finished all 5 faces I realised it looked TERRIBLE.

They looked like scary evil weirdo Gingerbread Men.  And at this point it was AFTER midnight.  So I just pretended I didn't care (but was so incredibly mad at myself inside for ruining them) and helped the ladies pack up and went home.  I showed the husby, and he too agreed they looked evil.  So guess what I did this morning?  Re-did them all over again.  From scratch, on the other side.  I didn't have enough paper from the night so I had to use some of my own too, which was difficult finding the right colour combinations because they papers to choose from last night were all co-ordinating becuase they were all from one set.  But I managed to work it out, and this is the new transformed Gingerbread Men that I am finally happy with.  Actually that's a lie.  I didn't need to pierce the holes on their heads and didn't realise that till I'd done them all but I'll have to get over it.  I finished them off tonight (after a really long day which included assisting in my brother's proposal, having a migraine, sleeping & baking) and have worked out where I am going to hang them for Christmas.

So there they are.  The feral annoying Gingerbread Men.  I'm sure I'll forgive them for being so annoying in due time.

You also may have noticed I never ended up doing embellishments.  I didn't trust myself to do it without ruining them all over again, and also decided that simple was better.  Really I was just glad to have them over and done with.  I love the effect and will do it again, but have learnt what to do and what not to.  Hopefully  next time it won't be so jolly frustrating!

Goodies in the Mail
I had a suprise in the mail for me yesterday from the giveaway I won at Kiwi at Heart last month...

And it had this inside!

Thanks for my Mini YoYo Christmas Tree!! I love it!!

NEW Tie Headband
So I have found another use for my old Thrifty ties that were 50 cents.  I will admit I broke the needle on the sewing machine so I realised I needed to handsew it together which was alot of work but definately worth it.  Do you like it?  

I likey.  Do you?  I might make another this week in a brighter coloured tie.  I was also thinking of doing this with a Christmas tie to wear on Christmas Day :)

**********

I'll save all the other goodies I've been working on for my posts over the next few days.  

Hope you had a great day, and don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already.  There's hardly any entries so far so you're in with a stinkin good chance this time!! 

Oh and I have a new button that my husby has been working on so I'll have to get him to get it all up and running tomorrow and show you.  It's the same as I have now but just jazzed up a little.  Next on the to do list for him is to do my name sign off coding doovey lackey, and then he is building me a website.  It'll only take 5 years to get it done :P

Until tomorrow...

Christy