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.

Six Years of Christmas Cards

Hubby and I have been making Christmas cards for a while since we were married. Ok, so the first year we didn't make a Christmas card. We just got married and were paying off a wedding, and I don't know what the cards were that year anyway, probably store bought. So we're going to start with Christmas number two.

This was hubby's idea, to make a computer art card by putting the cats on it. That's why we're still careful about what we put on our Christmas tree. Here's the inside...

Christmas #3, He doesn't want to cut ribbon ever again.

Christmas #4, I don't want to color in little ornaments and wear my colored pencils down to stumps. Bro-in-law helped color these too.

Christmas #5 No tree, but it still had an ornament.

Christmas #6 We used everything for this one. I was afraid I was going to wear out my punches.

Christmas #7 Last year's card. The cat was covered in green glitter.

Not sure I have a particular card making style, but I do have a theme to my Christmas cards. This year's card is going to be just as pretty.

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. 

Succulent Spring Wreath

I was asked to post a picture of this wreath when I finished it. It's a wreath kit from S.E.I. that I bought at the ScrapbookUSA show last month. I liked the colors in the kit and that it used some foam flower shapes with the double sided paper flowers.

It has almost everything you need to make it. The kit says that hot glue is recommended. I say it's required, or all those pinned flowers in the foam will pop off really fast. I added the lavender grosgrain ribbon as a hanging loop. I don't know how they hung that one up. It's kinda soft styrofoam you're building on.

I'm sure you can take all your personal flower punches and dies to make lots of layered flowers out of your own designer paper to create your own wreath. This particular kit has tons of leftover flower pieces that you can use for other projects. I had enough leftover that I could probably make a second wreath.