Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 10

Number 10 is a little elf. I haven't had time today to do a photo how to on making him - maybe tomorrow . .. but briefly he was made using a 1 1/4" circle punch for his head. A 1 3/8" circle for his shoulders, which has been punched again using the Scalloped Oval punch to give the scallops on the bottom edge. His ears are the wing from the Bird Builder punch.

His hat is punched from dsp using the largest petal in the Blossom Petal punch, with the brim punched using a 1 3/4" circle punch. 3/8" circles for the hat bobble, and for his nose. 1/4" and 1/8" circles for his eyes.

EDITED TO ADD: I have now done the tutorial, which is on the next post here.

I thought I would pop on a Christmas card as well:



This is one that I designed for a recent stampers ten project pack. It uses the Pines and Poinsettias stamp set, and the Holly Berry DSP. I stamped the rose & poinsettia stamp in Versamark as a background on the top half of the Cherry Cobbler card base, and embossed the greeting (from Curly Cute) with clear embossing powder at the bottom.

I die cut the circle for the image panel, and then inked up the rose and poinsettia stamp using my markers and used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to stamp it onto the circle. I then stamped another poinsettia image onto a scrap of card, cut it out and popped it onto the main image with dimensionals. The scalloped mat behind the main image is cut using the Perfect Pennants die.

You can't see in the photo, but the white areas of the flowers have been glittered with Dazzling Diamonds, so the image has a pretty twinkle to it which brings the card alive.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 9

A little gingerbread man on number nine.

I have seen various gingerbread punch art characters on the internet, but all of them too big for what I wanted, so I designed my own little chap!

I started with a scalloped circle punched out of Soft Suede card.



I attacked the scalloped circle with my Word Window punch. First punching out the bottom scallop, and then punching out on each side of the top scallop - going in a bit further for these two punches.



Next I used my 1 3/8" circle punch to take out three scallops on each side. This creates the body shape with a tab for the head to go on.



I stuck on a 3/4" circle for his head.




I snipped a bow tie shape from a scrap of Real Red card, and added a 1/8" circle in the middle.



Finally I drew in the details using a white gel pen. When the ink was completely dry, I drew in the pupils in with a black marker.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 8

A mini Christmas wreath today. This is a little fiddly, but doesn't take long to make.


Punch out a 1 1/4" circle from a piece of Garden Green, leaving some space around it.



Punch around the circular hole with the Scalloped Circle punch.



Using the pricking mat from the Mat Pack, shape the scallops with an embossing stylus by embossing in small circles on each scallop.



Punch out 14 mini flowers - here I've used the flower punch from the Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. Emboss each petal of the flower.




Then turn the flower over and emboss in the centre.



Place a small spot of glue to one side of a scallop, and place a flower on it, so that the flower is tilted on to one side.



Repeat with all of the flowers until the ring is filled.



Punch out 20 x 1/8" circles. I used the retired 1/8" hand held punch from SU. Place a small blob of glue in the centre, and then place three circles on top as shown in the photo.



Place a good blob of glue on the wreath as in the photo, and gently place a group of berries on top. Don't press down on the berries, in order to avoid the glue squelching out from underneath!




Finally use a glue dot to fix on a small bow. Here I have used the 1/8" Real Red taffeta ribbon.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 7

A Christmas pudding for day 7. Very simply made using a 1 3/8" circle punch. Punched one circle from Chocolate Chip, and another from Whisper White. The white one I then cut freehand with a pair of snips to resemble cream. Some very small circles punched in black with the smaller side of the Cropadile for raisins, and also in Real Red for the berries. The leaves are punched out of Wild Wasabi using the Jewelry Tag punch, and then using a 1/4" circle punch to nibble away at the sides until I had holly shapes I was happy with. Scored down the centres to finish.

Little Bird Gift Bag Tutorial

I finally got round to finishing the tutorial for the bag in this post. For the tutorial I have done a Christmas bag with a robin, but the basic idea is the same. Obviously the bird and branches are optional.

Click on the image above to download the tutorial which is in pdf format.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 6

Number 6 is a funky little Christmas tree. I saw an image a few weeks ago when browsing on the internet, and now can't remember what the art work was on, but it included a drawing of a tree which gave me the idea to create one from circle punches. It's very simple, but quite a cheery little tree I think!

The little star on top of the tree is the only non-SU thing on the whole advent calendar - it's a little (purple) Woodware punch. I punched it from Daffodil Delight, and glittered it with Dazzling Diamonds. The spots on the dsp also have Dazzling Diamonds on them. Here's how I made the tree:


Punch out three circles - sizes as shown in the photo. Mark the 12 o'clock position on all the circles, and also on the larger circle mark 3 and 9 o'clock. The marks on the smaller circles need to be slightly further down than the positions on the largest one as in the photo.




Use a post it note, and stick at the bottom of the circle. This is to use as a handle to hold the circle in the punch, but also as a memory aid to not punch that part of the circle!


Place a circle in the punch and line up two of the marks on the edge as indicated by the red arrows. Repeat on the other side of the circle.



Repeat for all three circles. They will look something like this.


Trim off the pointed parts on the largest two circles so that they don't poke out above the piece on top when you assemble the tree.


To create the dsp edge you will need to use the three circle punches you already used, plus a 3/4" circle punch. Start with the 3/4" punch and punch out at the edge of the dsp as in the photo.


Next take the 1" punch and punch around where you punched before to make a crescent shape.

Repeat this step with the 1" plus 1 1/4" punches and then the 1 1/4" plus 1 3/8" punches. You will end up with three crescent shapes which will fit on the bottom of your three tree pieces. The largest one will look like the one in the photo above. The other two will not be such pointy crescent shapes - more like a portion of a ring.


Stick each strip onto its respective tree piece.


Trim off the excess.


Repeat for all three pieces.


Stick the three segments together, and add a strip of Chocolate Chip for a trunk.

You can then finish off the tree as you fancy.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 4 & 5

Sorry, I managed to miss posting number 4 yesterday, but here it is now - Rudolph, with his shiny Crystal Effects nose and rather fabulous antlers!

I used the owl punch again for his head, this time trimming off the owl's feet, and cut the antlers with the Sizzix Sizzlit Swirls Scribbles die. I just used the larger two circles from the owl punch for his eyes, adding little highlights with my white gel pen.

And today's box, number 5:


A very smiley little Angel, which Amy informs me is her second favourite box decoration. You'll have to wait to see number 24 for her favourite one!

The angel's dress is made from the Scalloped Circle punch, trimmed with scissors to make the sides. Her feet are two little pink circles, and her arms are from the Word Window punch. I used the feet from the Owl Builder punch for her hands. Her wings are the Butterfly punch, punched from Whisper White, and then glittered using Heat'n'stick and Dazzling Diamonds. To make her halo I punched out the small oval, and then re-punched to get a smaller one. Then used a craft knife to cut out the centre. Finally finished off by heat embossing with gold powder.

To make her face and hair, I punched the two different sizes and colours of card, then placed the pink circle on top of the yellow one, and made little marks on the yellow circle beside the pink one where I wanted the fringe to finish. I removed the pink circle, and drew a zig zag line between the two lines on the yellow circle, then cut along the line with my craft knife. Finally I inserted the pink circle in the zig zag slit to create the fringe effect, putting a little spot of glue between the two circles behind the fringe to hold them together. I then slipped the top of the dress between the chin and the hair with another little blob of glue between the layers to hold them together.

Her face was sketched on with a pencil first, and then inked over with a marker when I was happy with the expression. Her body is fixed on to the wings using dimensionals, and the halo is glued flat on the back of her head.

I'll do my best to get back with number 6 tomorrow!

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar # 3

Just a simple little snowman for number 3 - made under the direction of my 8 year old . .. "I think you should use two circles to make him, with a black hat and a carrot nose and black eyes."
So here he is, according to my directions!

From snowmen to anniversary owls . . ..


After I had put the greeting on the card, it seemed a little bare in the space on each side, so I used the hearts and smallest eye circles from the Owl Builder punch to add a little embellishment on each side, and have to say that I'm quite pleased with how they look framing the Modern Label punch shape.

Back with # 4 of the advent calendar tomorrow.

Candy Wrapper Advent Calendar

Last year I made my daughter an 'advent calendar in a hurry'. I just made some sour cream containers from dsp with numbers on, added some punched tags with stamped numbers and threaded them on to some string which we taped to the door. Here's a photo taken a few days in with some of them already opened and the chocolate scoffed!


So this year I decided to make something a little more ambitious and used the Candy Wrapper die from Stampin' Up! to create the boxes. I cut the boxes from red and green card, and wrapped each one in dsp. Then started the ambitious part - a different Christmas themed punch art piece to decorate each box along with the die cut number. Good job I like doing the fiddly stuff! Amy and I had fun though, coming up with 24 different ideas - although we did cheat a little bit with counting a boy and a girl penguin as 2 different things!

All the effort was worth it though to look at that little smiley face. Here she is with all her boxes stacked on the mantle piece. They're not joined together, so she can rearrange them as the fancy takes her.



The good thing about the Candy Wrapper die boxes is that they don't need gluing to keep the ends shut, so can be folded flat and stored for next year!

Here is a closer look at the first two boxes:

# 1 has a little Santa owl made using the Owl Builder punch. Before punching the tummy part out, I stamped on Whisper White with the Santa jacket stamp from the Tags Til Christmas stamp set. His wings are the wings from the Bird Builder punch, which I also used for the red part of his hat. The hat brim is from the Word Window - punched once, then re-inserted and punched to trim it down. Finished off with a white circle which is the middle size eye from the Owl punch.




# 2 has a penguin also made using the Owl Builder punch. I trimmed off the ears, and stuck them on lower down to make little wings. His hat was made in the same way as the Santa owl's hat.




Another box tomorrow . .

Card/Paper: The boxes and die cut numbers are all made from either Real Red, Wild Wasabi or Garden Green and are wrapped in Real Red, Wild Wasabi or Garden Green dsp. Punch art uses a range of scraps of card and dsp.

Ink: Real Red for Santa jacket

Stamps: Tags Til Christmas

Other: Candy Wrapper Die, Owl Builder Punch, Bird Builder Punch, Timeless Type Junior Alphabet (numbers)