Christmas gift tags

If you stick around long enough, you will see that my favorite projects involve using paper from my scraps drawer. Let's face it, you spend two bucks on a sheet of paper and only use a 4th of it, you might as well keep it to get your money's worth. I haven't bought gift tags in years. It is really simple to make them.

Step One: Cut out two squares, a 3x3 square and a slightly smaller one. Sand or ink, one or both, or none.
Step Two: Glue smaller one to larger one. Add any little element, a die cut, a punch, or free hand shape. I love cutting words out of paper scraps. You are the artist go crazy!
Step Three: Staple on some ribbon or punch a hole and run some string through it. If you have more time on your hands, you could add some glitter glue or doodle a design with a fancy pen.

Now you are ready to put a beautiful handmade tag on your gift. You are so thoughtful!

No ribbon, no problem. Here I have used a rubber band through the hole.

Not so negative. The house was punched out for another project,
now it is the main attraction for this tag.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

 In some parts of the country, they are getting the white stuff for Christmas. Unfortunately, (or fortunately depending on how you feel) we don't have any yet around here. Instead of a rain dance, we are urging it on at my house with a Let It Snow Banner. The patterned paper comes from Making Memories. The letters are from the Storybook Cricut Cartridge. I white washed (the lazy woman's painting technique) some clothes pins to adhere the letters to the ribbon.

Create Blog Card Challenge

This card is in response to a challenge on the Scrapbooking Trends Create Blog. The challenge was to create a card that is easily mass produced for the busy holiday card maker. This card is a simple but detailed card. I used Cricut Storybook to get the shape for my background. The tree is simply three different free hand triangles. The star comes from the Cricut cartridge Doodlecharm. Of course if you don't have a Cricut you can cut all the shapes free hand. The Cricut is good however for cutting many shapes at once. So all you have to do in the end is assemble them all.


I sanded the edges of just about every element. I normally sand or ink everything I create.  In this case the sanding gives my tree a frosted look. I made the Merry Christmas by printing onto a sheet of clear labels. This way I have 30 sentiments that I can stick on patterned paper and easily affix to the fronts of my cards. When doing a mass card production, I suggest creating all of your elements first and then sitting down and assembling all the cards at once. This is quicker than trying to make one card at a time from start to finish. Plus, if you have help (I enlisted the help of my kids), it is easier if you have all your elements made. That way your helpers have everything they need to run a card making assembly line. Happy card making!

What junk mail?

I ran across some inspiration this week when going to the mailbox. To keep down clutter I try to put junk mail into the recycling bin immediately rather than letting it accumulate on a table top. On the way to the kitchen, this post card caught my eye.

The company is using Christmas ornaments to get me into the holiday spirit and mostly to sell me their latest package deal. Well, the first part of their plan worked. I decided to use the layout of the postcard as the layout for my page.

I used the Cricut cartridge "Christmas Cheer" to cut the ornaments out. I used silver paper for the twinkles and ornament string. It is a simple but spirited page. I haven't done a layout on white paper in a long time. I started to use patterned paper, but wanted to stay true to my AT&T design. Now my baby’s first Christmas page is ready! So while no news might be could news, junk mail can be useful.