Design Mouse

10 Days of Holiday Crafts: The 12 Days Begin - 12 Crafty Links

1. Dear Santa Stationery: http://designeditor.typepad.com/files/desantastationery.pdf
2. Glitter Ornaments: http://www.erinvaledesign.com/leo_on_the_loose/2011/12/holiday-glitter-ornament-tutorial.html
3. Polymer Clay Gift Tags: http://www.etsy.com/listing/85620945/merry-merry-custom-large-round-white
4. Draw Your Own Gift Wrap: http://www.minieco.co.uk/hand-drawn-giftwrap/
5. Illustrated Characters to Use for Cards or Scrapbooks: http://www.welovetoillustrate.com/2011/11/free-printable-holiday-scrapbooking.html
6. DIY Felt Ornament Kits: http://rosylittlethings.com/snowdaykit.html
7. Recycled Paper Wreath: http://bkids.typepad.com/bookhoucraftprojects/2011/11/project-98-paperbag-wreath.html  (I'm going to try it with ribbon scraps.)
8. Milk and Cookie Snowmen: http://celebrationsathomeblog.com/2009/01/perfect-little-milk-bottles.html
9. Pop-top Treat Cans: http://notsoidlehands.blogspot.com/2009/07/christmas-in-july-freecycle-friday.html
10. Printable Holiday Kit: http://www.ellinee.com/freebie-friday-wood-type-holiday-printable-kit/
11. Stamp Your Own Wrapping Paper: http://www.mygirlthursday.com/2011/12/creative-holiday-wrapping-with-cassie.html
12. 12 Days of Christmas Tags:http://todaysmama.com/2011/12/printable-12-days-of-christmas-tags/

10 Days of Holiday Crafts: Card Kits

If you like to make your own cards but need a little creative boost, card kits are a great place to start. I find that they typically have enough supplies to make a lot more than the cards they specify. I took some classes at the CKC scrapbooking convention, which is where I made most of the cards in this post.

Here are my two favorite manufacturers for card kits that I have found to be fun and good quality. With all of them I have made more cards than what the kit specified:

Basic Grey: http://www.basicgrey.com/scrapbook/shop/category/card-kit

Technique Tuesday: http://www.techniquetuesday.com/category/Projects-And-Kits.html

The kits come with instructions and you can usually buy the papers separately. So, if you want to have more crafty fun with your friends, you can create more kits and host a card making day like I did this year. Using the kits is fast, too - I made all these cards in just a few hours during our card day.

10 Days of Holiday Crafts: Advent Calendar Cards

An advent calendar has been part of our Christmas tradition for as far back as I can remember. One year, I created a twist on this for my parents, who lived 13 hours away. I made 25 cards using family Christmas photos for the front of the card. Then I wrote my journalling on the inside of the card. I used foam stamps to decorate and number 25 envelopes. 

I sealed the cards inside and sent two bundles, tied in ribbon, to my parents with the instructions that they should open one each day - according to the number on the envelope. Sending them in two batches meant that I only had to do 12 cards before December, then I had about a week to get the other 13 cards done. 

For Christmas I gave my parents and album that had pages the size of the cards so they could put them all in one place. This was a fun way to use some of our many family Christmas pictures and capture some of my thoughts.

10 Days of Holiday Crafts: Recycled Gift Tags

My mother-in-law bought a set of these Kirkland handmade gift tags from Costco a couple years ago. They are quite elaborate and it seemed a shame to only use them for one year. Maybe you even make your own elaborate handmade gift tags and don't want to see them go to waster. So here are three ways we've recycled them:

1. Write on the backs with pencil. 
2. Cut paper the same size as the back and adhere over last year's names. This is easy for square tags. 
3. Make cards from the gift tags. 

Here is a set of cards I made from the gift tags I saved. Each card is about 3"x5", depending on the size of the tag. It only took me a little over an hour to make 11 cards this way. For most of the cards I followed this basic formula:

1. Measure tag. 
2. Cut out colored backing paper that is 1/2" wider and 1/2" taller than the tag.
3. Cut out white cardstock that is 1" taller than the tag and will fold to be 1" wider than the tag. 
4. Round corners & add embellishments, if needed.
5. For the waving bear, penguin on skates and santa cards I tore paper strips to create "snow" to ground the figures. 

10 Days of Holiday Crafts: Let it Snow!

I wanted to hang snowflakes above the entryway but I didn't want to put a bunch of holes in our wall. Since we have a lofted ceiling above the door, hanging from the ceiling was out of the question. First I considered using a piece of fat ribbon as a border to hide the top of the threads, which I think would work well if you have the right ribbon handy. I did not, so I turned to my Cricut. 

Here is what I ended up with: 

Each snowflake is tied with silver thread. The end of the thread is attached to the trees with blue tape. Then more blue tape is used to stick the trees to the wall. The only real trick is to keep the threads short where people will walk and around the vents. 

Wedding Decor: Invitations

I love all the coordinated wedding invitations I see online, but I didn't want to pay for custom invitations. Besides, I wanted the fun of designing my own.

I loved the poster-inspired invitation from The Spark Machine. So I borrowed that idea. For the main focus of the invitation I copied a stylized postcard from The Century Ballroom's New Year's party. Ryan and I took a lot of dance classes there, so it felt appropriate since it was an element of our relationship. Here is what we ended up with:

For the smaller graphic elements I downloaded some fonts from ScrapNFonts.

I created the whole thing using Adobe InDesign. I printed all the invitation components using coupons and rewards points at Staples. The gal working the print center let me come back and help her get all the color adjustments just the way I wanted them.

Ryan then helped me cut, round corners and score about 100 invitations.

He then helped me stamp the seals and matching envelopes. I glued matching labels in the bottom left corner of each envelope, covering up that rough edge on the lower stamp. 

As you can see from the pictures it was pretty dark while we were doing this. We don't get much light after 5pm in the winter around here.