Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Ringing In The New Year

Thought it would be fun to turn some of our new New Year's designs into little standing displays...for your home or your co-workers' desks, maybe?





Click here to get a pattern to make the projects in this post. To make the display table...cut along solid lines and fold along dotted lines. Apply double stick tape to the 4 tabs and adhere:



There's also a little strip pattern...cut out and fold along dotted lines to form a cube (above, left). Use a glue dot to attach to table (above, right).



I stamped, colored and cut out the kadomatsu arrangement (cutting out duplicate pieces and mounting on foam dots for a 3-D effect). Then simply adhere the arrangement to the cube on the table top. Next, I used the same idea but made another pattern a little bit longer to accommodate a calendar:



Follow the same directions for the smaller table...but this time cut out a piece of card stock (pattern included) to mount the calendar on. Score 1/4" from bottom edge and apply double stick tape to this tab...mount kadomatsu with a foam dot, below:



Attach to table:



Thanks for stopping by!!!

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Arigato

You can never have too many thank you cards...all stamps are from our new Keiko set.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

New Stamps!!


Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!! Please forgive my loooong absence...I've been struggling to recover from a particularly bad case of blog burnout!! But, hopefully, some new stamps will make up for that. First up is Keiko...she comes with an "extra hand" to allow her to hold a variety of items:



This set also comes with a branch stamp and a bunch of cherry blossoms to decorate the branch. Helpful hint: the flowers are really tiny, so I tried to line them up in a way that you can cut a couple of them together like this:



That way it will be a little easier to handle. (Sorry, I should have taken a photo of the rubber before I did a ton of stamping with it.) And here is a sample of the project that comes with each set:



As you open the card, the scenery starts to pop up:



Once the card is fully open, you see Keiko standing on a bridge surrounded by cherry blossom branches!!!



Also new for 2012...Year of the Dragon stamps:



and New Year stamps:



Mochi and "kadomatsu" are local traditions used to bring in the new year...bamboo signifies growth and strength...fresh pine represents long life and endurance.