Whirlpool of Imagination

Lucky Treats

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you!! We had a fun day with a trip to the Irish Club, corned beef sandwiches for lunch and Irish sausages for dinner. (and nothing but salad for the rest of the week!). Because I seem to wait until the last minute, I was working on the treats for Conor's class last night. Of course Meg sees them and asks if she can have some for her class too - of course I say yes. So, 42 little treats later I get to go to sleep!

For some reason, this picture came out horrible. (And I swear I didn't have any Bailey's until after the pics had been taken!). I wanted something cute but small and semi-quick for the kids' classmates. I don't have a lot of cute leprechaun images so I pulled out my Quickutz for this project.

The bag topper actually has a pretty blue base but the camera didn't pick that up too well. I stamped little shamrocks from Papertrey Ink on the top and bottom of the topper. The white strip is actually embossed with the cuttlebug swiss dots folder and then the hat was cut out, assembled and raised up a bit with mounting tape.

It's pretty simple but I try not to go too crazy with the kid's classmates treats - cute works fine for me.

Heart of Love

Mo will be away for business on Valentine's Day so we all went out to eat last night for an early family celebration. Since we're all trying to eat healthy and not have a ton of candy in the house, I went for a small tin that I could add just a little bit of chocolate to.

I got this cute little tin at Michael's.

Since the tin is red, I decided to go with the black, white and red theme. This stamp is from Beeswax. I stamped it up and by using a couple of heart punches, I had a quick decoration for the tin. I'm still rolling and organizing my ribbon and I found this great wide b&w stripe that was perfect for the body of the tin.

I'm almost done with Meg's Valentine's and then I can breathe a sigh of relief. I have some things I'd like to tackle but I need to get these done first. Have a great day!

Dinosaur Hearts

The germs are flying in our household. Monday Conor was diagnosed with strep throat. Today, so was Mo. All this sickness has my computer and crafting time to a minimum. Although I was finally able to do a little work today. Some of it was busy work coloring for an order I'm working on but I did get a Valentine idea worked out.

A few weeks ago, I was shopping at BJ's and saw this package of conversation hearts boxes. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but I just had to have them.

I had visions of covering them like a book with the front flap opening as a book would. And that's almost what I ended up with.

When making templates, the biggest challenge is getting the scores in just the right place for a good fold. It took a few times tinkering with the numbers but I have found the perfect measurements for a nice fit for these little boxes.

Cut a piece of cardstock 4x5.75 inches. Score the long side at 2.5 and 3.25 inches. This will make the "book" cover. I originally adhered only the back and the spine but wasn't happy with it so I did end up attaching the front flap as well. Now it's just a book that doesn't open.

The number of these that I have to make (among others) is a lot so I kept it real simple. The dinosaur (from A Muse) was stamped in Prussian Blue chalk ink. In hindsight, I may color in the hearts with a glitter pen to make it sparkle a bit instead of just the plain red. Other than that, I'm ready to bang these out in a quick assembly line fashion. What I like too is the back provides plenty of room for writing. Have you seen the teeny tiny foldover Valentine's in the stores nowadays. How in the world is a 4 year supposed to write names on that????? Let's face it, at that age they make their letters four feet tall. And that's what makes their writing so darn cute. Trying to scrunch all that up into a ridiculous space just gives me a headache thinking about it!!