Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt 2016

It's bunny boxes for Easter! I didn't buy anything new for this project. I used what I had. I saw many projects on Pintrest using the Stampin' Up! Curvy Keepsakes Box die and turning it into a bunch of creature for the season. So why not bunnies?

I used the mini heart punch from the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack for the adorable little bunny nose. Drew on the face with a black pigma pen and used A Heartfelt Creations stamp and die set that are long retired. They were individual lily petals that I thought looks like the inside of an ear.

Not shown is the back where I cut a cotton ball in half and glued it on for the fluffy little cotton tail. Of course we filled them with lots of yummy chocolate treats.

These boxes hold a lot of treats inside. They're bigger than you think they are. The fun part was making 65 of them for the egg hunt. I enlisted my husband's family to help assemble them. I think they appreciate all the effort it takes to make a large orders of crafts.

We hung them from our fruit trees with colorful bakers twine. It looks like a curtain of cute bunny fruit.

The kids came around and pointed at which bunny they wanted and we cut them down to land in their Easter baskets. Moms thought they were adorable and made sure they told their visiting family that we make the treat containers every year.

Easter Egg Booth

Happy Easter!

This was our treat for our annual Easter Egg Hunt. Each child could pick an entire paper basket with three treat filled eggs  The usual comments of "How cute!" and "So creative!" were heard from the parents of the children. Plus, a few pictures and questions of taking an extra one if there was some left.

I had my hubby help by using his recently learned scouting skills to lash some wooden dowels to the card table for the banners. It held.  Here's a quick list of craft supplies: gold glitter Happy banner (Theresa Collins), black paper banner kit (American Crafts), gold Sharpie, chalkboard paper (DCWV), white chalk marker (Chalk Couture), Berry Basket Die (Stampin' Up!)

We always seem to have an unusual amount of cardboard boxes around the house, so the case trays for food cans seemed the appropriate vehicle for all the baskets. And thanks to my grandpa's collection of farm related decorations, the added milk can and metal drink cooler were perfect decorations. I found the metal basket in a thrift store.

Now I need to think of what next year's treat will be...

Paper Purses

I had to wait to post this because it was a surprise for our Relief Society this year. The Relief Society president asked me to make some paper boxes that they could fill with candy for the sisters' birthdays this year. So, it couldn't be boring, right?

I bought the Stampin' Up! Bigz L Petite Purse Die for this project. Then pulled a whole bunch of paper from my collection. I barely made a dent. Most of the paper was flocked pattern paper that I thought would look nice as real purse.

I used a couple of the smaller SU! punches as metal tags that you would find on purses, Little Labels, and Modern Label punch. And used a gem on the front.

Use tiny brads to attach the purse handle and the little jewelry tag punch. The brads help so you can fold the handle down so it doesn't get crunched.

I used the That's the Ticket stamp set and the Ticket Builder Duo punch for the birthday greeting. Then fill with candy.

Christmas 2014 Craft Projects

Well...here they are, the crafts for Christmas 2014. We actually finished the cards before Halloween and had to store them somewhere until it was a better time to mail them.

Hubby suggests getting that Spellbinders All-in-One tool to help with the die cutting. We didn't get one until after he cut out all the trees. And while the imaginince i-rock jewel setter is nice for a few heat set jewels, I might get a better jewel setter later for bigger projects. It went through quite a few batteries heat setting all those jewels. Everything else went together as normal.

The neighborhood gifts were Mint Muddy Buddies in a stylish canning jar with the flower punched lids, colored paper under them and pretty ribbon glued around it. I made the label in Silhouette Studio, and hubby came up with the saying.  Isn't he clever?

Kusudama Paper Flower Centerpieces

Ok, since finishing the quilt, I've been busy folding paper. These centerpieces are for the Harmonaires annual potluck performance. I added a third color this year; red, white and black.

Yes, I made 15 of them, again. So each cardboard box (from Hobby Lobby) holds 12 paper flowers. Each paper flower has 5 folded pieces of paper. So that would mean hubby and I folded 900 pieces of paper! Yikes!

Since this event is always music themed, we'd need some music flowers. Don't worry, I didn't cut up important music. We used some old Children's hymn books that we cut the pages into 6" squares. Gotta love that the old books were $1.00 each at Deseret Industries. The black and red flowers are real origami paper that I ordered online in bulk. Good luck finding one color packs of usable paper, (which I got from Mulberry Paper).

The flowers are assembled with 1/8" inch Sookwang tape, except for the last piece. You need to leave the last side open to get your wire or pipe cleaner stem in the middle. Then hot glue the stem in and a flat backed jewel in the middle. Hot glue a slice of the green floral foam in the middle of the box and hide it with half a sheet of black tissue paper. Also cut up a piece of red tissue paper into quarters and use 2 per box. The stems will easily poke through the paper into the foam while arranging. As you get to the sides of the arrangement, I just folded the stems in half to get that domed look.

Here's an example of one on a 60" round table with our usual red mesh squares and glass gems holding the edges down. It still curls up 3 years later.

It doesn't look half bad at the party. I tried to get a picture of the room before guests showed up. They were quick right after we just finished getting the tables set.

Bonus project! Remember the Easter candy boxes I made this year? We did it again with smaller pillow boxes and a music notes embossing folder. This time the embossing folder is from Spellbinders.

Oh, and the candy is delicious Chocolate Dutch Mints from Jelly Belly. Yes, you can get them in plain white instead of the pastel colors.

We did give away the centerpieces to the Harmonaires choir members as a present. There is no way I had room to store 15 bulky centerpieces without crunching the paper flowers. Our guests were excited to take them home. 

Easter Treat Boxes

These were our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt treats for this year. The candy is from Jelly Belly, Sour Bunnies and Sunkist Fruit Gems. It helps if you can get them in bulk on a wholesale account. The acrylic pillow boxes are from Clear Bags, the food safe kind. And, the Easter Egg embossing folder is from Darice. Yes, you can put acrylic boxes in your embossing folders without damage. I just used my Big Shot multipurpose platform with no tabs on my machine. Just to get rid of some random pieces of ribbon, we used just about every ribbon scrap I had, and then some I didn't like. It helps keep the boxes closed.