Christmas Project #11 – Christmas Puddings!!

Julia's Christmas Puddings!!

These make me smile! The idea just came to me one day and I thought – “I could make a pudding!!!!”

Well, considering that there’s NO WAY that I’d make a REAL Christmas pudding – baking just isn’t my thing…. LOL – I thought at least I can make a fake one. TEE HEE!!!

To make your Christmas Pudding you will need:

• Circle punch (I used my 1&3/4 punch)
• Small oval punch (for the Holly – see my previous Christmas Project for a tutorial for how to make Holly)
• 3/4″ circle punch
• Crop-a-dile (for Berries and Raisins)
• Scissors
• Soft Suede, Chocolate Chip, Wild Wasabi, Whisper White and Poppy Parade cardstock.

Punch out the following shapes:

• circle in Soft Suede
• circle in Whisper White,
• 3 x Wild Wasabi ovals
• 4 x Chocolate chip tiny circles
• 3 x Poppy Parade tiny circles

Christmas Pudding Punch Art

Then using very sharp scissors, cut the Whisper White circle into an “icing” shape. It’s hard to explain, so here’s a picutre for you:

Christmas Pudding Punch Art

You will see that you can actually use both sides of the ‘icing’ – so you will get two puddings from this one Whisper White circle – just flip one over.

Christmas Pudding Punch Art

Christmas Pudding Punch Art

Now you want to make your Holly – see my previous post about making Holly – well, you can see how easy it is by checking out the picture!

Christmas Pudding Punch Art - Holly

You don’t need a photo of the teeny tiny Chocolate Chip and Poppy Parade circles for the Raisins and Berries – but you get the idea… assemble your Christmas Pudding parts and glue them down with Tombow Glue or your Two Way Glue Pen. It’s super easy and even the children can get involved with this one to help you make them!

Christmas Pudding Punch Art by Julia.

Here are my finished Christmas Puddings ready to go on cards, candles and drinking straws for the children at Christmas!

Children's Christmas Table-Setting.

You can’t see the glitter that I added to the edge of the icing. So cute!

Thankyou for visiting!

X Julia.

Christmas Triangle Gift Boxes

Want a unique way to gift-box some Chocolates or a small gift? Why not make these cute triangle gift boxes?

• Cut a piece of patterned paper to 10 x 20 cm.
• Fold in half.
• Find the center of the short edges (5cm inwards) and then score diagonally from that 5 cm mark to the edge of the paper at the halfway point. Punch holes at each corner so taht you can thred ribbon through to close the boxes.

Christmas Triangle Gift Box - Open

All you need do now is decorate the boxes, although if you’ve used highly-patterned paper you may want to leave it fairly plain so as not to appear too ‘busy’. I’ve decorated mine with a simple stamp and punched tag and also with one of my Ribbon Rosettes (as seen in the previous post).

Thankyou for visiting!

X Julia.

Christmas Rosette

This hanging decoration is made by gathering a length of ribbon into a rosette. I stitched one edge with large ‘gathering’ stitches and pulled the thread tightly until the ribbon bunched up and formed a circle. I secured the ribbon in the center by stitching in and out multiple times. Add a length of ribbon to create a loop to hang on the tree, and a stamped sentiment to cover the center of the rosette and you’re done!

Wow – this post was short and sweet and wasn’t it? You should be thanking me because now you can get on with your Christmas preparations (or shopping, if you’re anything like me – I still have a bit to do!! EEEEK!!!) Go on – off you go!!!

Thankyou for visiting and don’t forget, you CAN leave me a comment- I don’t bite!

X Julia.

There aren’t too many ocassions when we bring out the candles – anniversaries, birthdays and of course, Christmas. So this year, why not make a feature of your candles?

Stamping on Candles

Stamping on Candles

The name of this technique is not strictly accurate – you don’t actually STAMP directly on the candle which would be quite tricky… there is a simpler method! Read on, dear reader!!!

To decorate your candles, you will need a cheap candle from a cheap shop, ordinary tissue paper, a stamp set of your choice and inks, greaseproof paper (someone else has suggested Wax paper, but as I couldn’t find any I tried greaseproof and had no problems!), and a Heat Tool.

Stamping on candles - supplies

Start by stamping on the tissue paper. It’s a good idea to have some scrap paper underneath the tissue paper as your ink will bleed through onto your work surface. Cut around the images, leaving a small border of tissue paper.

Stamp on tissue paper

Cut around your stamped images

With one piece of tissue paper at a time, place it on your candle in the desired place, and cover with greaseproof paper. You can wrap the greaseproof around the whole candle and use the excess of greaseproof as a sort-of handle. I grasp the greaseproof paper quite tightly around the candle.

Wrap greaseproof paper around candle

Heat the area of the candle where the tissue paper is. You can get quite close with the Heat Tool, but keep a careful eye on the melting wax. If you look closely, you will see the tissue paper melt into the candle and the stamped image will become ‘brighter’. It’s almost like watching embossing powder melt – you can see it happening!! Carefully heat the whole image until it has ‘melted’ into the candle, being careful not to overheat the wax.

You will see tiny beads of wax coming up through the greaseproof paper which is really odd to see… there must be some really interesting scientific explanation (it’s beyond me LOL!)  but it’s really weird to see the wax bleed through the greaseproof paper – don’t be alarmed if this happens for you. When the whole image has been heated, I removed the greaseproof straight away – you can see if any tissue paper needs heating again – and the stamped image is now magically on the candle!!! TaDAAAA!

Finished Candle

Here are some other candles I’ve stamped… (You can see that you can even colour in the tissue paper with a Blender Pen before affixing it to the candle – just be light with your blending and be gentle or you can tear the tissue paper!)

Colouring Tissue paper for candle

Santa Candles

Stamping on candles

Holiday Lineup on a candle

Reindeer on a candle

These candles also make great gifts – we gave one to each of  our children’s teachers and they loved them! (My parents received one this week, too.)  I’ve also kept one for our own dining table!

Stamped Candle as a Gift

I hope you’ve found this interesting and perhaps you may give it a go! Please let me know by leaving a comment if you found this helpful or if you think you’ll  give this a go. Once you get all your supplies ready it really is VERY easy and fun!

Cheers! Thankyou for visiting. Please feel free to drop me a comment – I love comments!!!

X Julia.

Little Bird-house

To create this little Birdhouse, I’m combining a couple of projects that I’ve shared with you during my 12 Days of Christmas Projects – the Mini Milk Carton, my punched-Holly and the Robin from Christmas Project #6.

Follow the previous directions for each of those projects to assemble the mini milk carton, Holly and the Robin. Don’t forget to punch a circle out of the mini milk carton for the birdhouse entrance! To create the roof, I simply cut cardstock at the same width as the top of the mini milk carton and punched scallop edges on five sections. There really si no need for a template or measurements – just as long as the width is the same, you can add as many “roof tiles” as you like. I’ve spondged the edges of the birdhouse and roof to make it look more rustic. (Rustic is good because it can “hide” a multidude of little mistakes – Rustic means ‘off-centre’ or’ wobbly’ or ‘ooops’ in my dictionary!!)

This is a perfect size to hang on your Christmas Tree with a little piece of ribbon or placed on a shelf or mantlepiece – very cute.

Thankyou visiting – please come back to see the remainder of the 12 Days of Christmas!

Robin Fancy Favour Box

Here’s a very useful gift-box/bag that I’ve decorated with a punched-out robin using the Two-Step Birdy Punch. The idea for creating a Robin from the Two-Step Bird punch  was presented by a very clever lady at our Regional Training Day – Carolyn Bennie – so, much credit and love to her!!!!

I’ve cut the Fancy Favour box with my Big Shot from Jolly Holiday Designer Series Paper and assembled it with Tombow Glue.  Super quick!!! I’ve stamped the holly image from the Good Cheer stamp set in Old Olive and gently sponged the edges of the Whisper White cardstock with Early Espresso to soften the edges.

To make your Christmas Robin, you will need two sponge daubers, Whisper White cardstock, Cherry Cobbler & Early Espresso ink and the Two-Step Bird Punch.

Supplies to make Robin

Start with Cherry Cobbler ink – dab your sponge dauber in the ink and then swirl it on a scrap of Whisper White cardstock. Keep dabbing back in the ink and apply to the cardstock again to achieve the depth of colour you want. When you’re happy with the depth of colour, grab your next dauber and dab it in the Early Espresso ink. Swirl this onto the cardstock just above the Cherry Cobbler ink that you’ve already applied. You can over-lap the colours to blend them.

When you start swirling the ink onto the cardstock, it can look a bit patchy – don’t worry… keep blending it in! I find the best action is a circular motion.

Take your Bird Punch and slide the cardstock into the punch. Check how you’re going for ink coverage and you can always add more ink if you need to. Line up the bird so that the Cherry Cobbler ink shows as his breast, and punch out the bird.

I like to sponge the edges of the bird shape to give it more definition once it’s punched out. This also ensures you get good ink coverage on the sides of the cardstock and hides those white areas you might have missed with your original sponging.

Adhere this to your Holly image and then adhere the wing with a Stampin’ Dimensional.

I wrapped some Special Christmas ribbon around the Fancy Favour box and then adhered my piece of Whisper White (the join of the ribbon is hidden underneath the white cardstock!) I added a mini library clip with a small knot of ribbon to finish it off. Too easy!

Completed Robin project.

Give the Robins a go – they look really pretty, and the great thing is that each one will be individual due to how you swirl on the ink for the red-breast.

Oooh – it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Thankyou for visiting!!

Christmas Mini Milk Cartons

Perfect for chocolates, sweeties/lollies, or small gifts, these Mini Milk Cartons are too cute at Christmas-time.

The Mini Milk Carton is cut from a Stampin’ Up! exclusive die that is used with your Big Shot. The great thing with this die is that you can use it with the standard cutting plates that arrive with the Big Shot, so there’s no need to purchase extra cutting mats.

Once you’ve cut your cardstock template, you can either decorate or stamp the cardstock prior to assembling the milk carton, or you can decorate it after it’s assembled like I have done here. I’ve cut one Mini Milk Carton from Designer Series Paper (Jolly Holiday – love it!!), and the other one is cut from Cherry Cobbler cardstock with Old Olive cardstock scallop features. If you see the Cherry Cobbler milk carton – it has a see through window…. I simply punched out a circle on one of the sides before putting it together, and then adhered a small square of clear Window Sheet on the inside (to prevent the treats falling out – we can’t have the treats falling out, can we???!!!)

I’ve used my circle and scallop circle punches to create tags, and affixed them to the milk carton with a mini library clip (with glue dots!). The stamp set for the tags is Sparkly and Bright – so cute.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been using Tombow Glue to glue my 3D projects – really, this is so much quicker than the Sticky Strip and the glue is super strong too! So for any small projects that aren’t going to have anything too heavy in them, I’ve been using Tombow Glue. Sticky Strip still has its place in my heart (LOL), but I mix and match and grab what’s handy at the time – I’d completely run out of my Sticky Strip while creating these projects for you so Tombow Glue stepped up and didn’t disappoint!

Thankyou for visiting.

candle-holders with rub-ons.

Holly & Jolly rub-ons

I love the Glade candles that you can buy at supermarkets to make the house smell all lovely – this one was possibly Apple & Cinnamon or even Vanilla (yum)… I just let the candle burn itself down and once it’s finished, I sit the glass jar in a bowl of really hot water to soften the remaining wax and then scoop it out. Most times the metal wick-holder comes out too – although I have one very persistent metal bit that is refusing to budge! (I’ll get it!)

Once the glass is clean and dry, you can apply your rub-ons. The best way to do this is to cut around your desired rub-ons first, then hold them in place as you rub them. I found I had to rub fairly firmly and check that every part of the rub-on had adhered to the glass. But really, it was quite quick and easy to do this and it looks so cute! I’ve put a tea light candle in the bottom of the glass ready to be lit for Christmas.

Holly & Jolly rub-ons

Tee Hee – I have quite a few of the scented candle glasses, so I guess we’ll be having a few of these decorated glasses around the house come Christmas – of course, they would make lovely GIFTS, too!

Christmas Rub-ons on glass

Thankyou for visiting, I hope you liked these Christmas candle-holders.

Christmas Box in a Bag. Stamped Images © Stampin’ Up!

This will make your gift-giving so cute! These gift bags are perfect for bags of cookies, chocolates (I mention chocolate a fair bit, don’t I? LOL) or any other small gift.

I found the original project designed by a very creative lady – Diana Gibbs. All credit to her!

If you’d like to make the boxes as I have done today, here are the directions:

1) You will need:

• Cardstock
• Designer Series Paper
• Round Tab Punch
• Scallop Trim Punch
• Bone Folder
• Sticky Strip (or Tombow Glue)
• Ribbons
• Crop-a-dile (not pictured)
• Jumbo Eyelets (not pictured)
• Embellishments

Supplies for Box in a Bag Project.

2) Cut your cardstock to4 & 1/2″ x 4 & 1/2″.

• Score 1″ all around the edges – all four sides.
• Crease along all score lines
• Snip inwards on two sides opposite each other

Cut and score cardstock.

3) Apply Sticky Strip or Tombow Glue to the “square” parts of box:

Box in a Bag Base

4) Assemble the box by folding in the square parts:

Assemble box

5) Cut your Designer Series Paper to 5″ x 11″ and apply Sticky Strip to the long edge and one short edge:

Designer Series Paper

6) Peel off the Sticky Strip from the long edge and start to ‘wrap’ the DSP around the base of the box:

Wrapping DSP around Box

7) Keep going until you get to the short edge. Peel the Sticky Strip from the short edge and gently press down:

Wrapping DSP around box

Box in a Bag

You will now need to cut some cardstock to 1″ x 11″ and use your Scallop Trim punch to punch a border. Apply Sticky Strip to the back of the punched out border:

Scallop Trim

Scallop Trim with Sticky Strip

9) Peel off the Sticky Strip and adhere the Scallop Trim border to the outside of the base of the Bag:

Scallop Trim on base

10) Use the Round Tab punch to punch out two tabs. Apply Sticky Strip to the inside of both sides and then adhere to the top of the bag:

Round Tab punch

Round Tabs

11) Use the Crop-a-dile to punch holes in each round tab. Carefully push a Jumbo Eyelet in each hole and affix with the Crop-a-dile:

Jumbo Eyelets

12) Thread ribbon of your choice through the Jumbo Eyelets to close the Bag and then decorate with a Christmas tag:

Box in a Bag with Ribbon

13) To make the Tag embellishment of the smaller Box in a Bag, punch out two Scallop Squares and cut the top and bottom thre scallops off the corner:

Tag embellishment

14) Cut the longer strips in half, (discard the top and bottom triangles) and attach around the circle tag at the “corners”:

Tag with Scallop corners

15) This is the view of the back of the Tag. To make it look neater simply punch out a circle and cover the ‘messy’ back:

Back View of tag.

Back of Tag.

16) Here is the finished Box in a Bag! This is the smaller one which I made with the off-cut of Designer Series Paper from the first Box in a Bag! (Two for the price of one!! Woo hoo)

Finished (small) Box in a Bag

Here are the two finished projects for you:

Finished Box in a Bag project.

I hope you enjoyed this Tutorial and that you might even give it a go! These are super easy once you’ve made one – and they really do look lovely. You can make them in many sizes, just change the height of the Designer Series Paper to have a taller or shorter Box in a Bag!

Thankyou for Visiting and I hope you enjoyed your 3rd Christmas project. Stay tuned for Project 4!

Christmas Hanging gift boxes. Design by Julia. Stamped Images © Stampin’ Up!

We have a Tradition in our family of having a Christmas Tree Present – My mum always had an extra, small gift hiding for us on the tree that was kind of a last-surprise gift after all the madness of un-wrapping had passed and we’d stuffed ourselves silly with dinner… They never had a name-tag on them – mum just “knew” whose was who’s and gave them out with much anticipation from us! The gifts were usually small and I’ve carried this Tradition on with our family. These small boxes will be ideal for small gifts or even chocolates (yum!!) that you can hang on your tree.

I cut 4″ x4″ squares from Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive cardstock and also from Jolly Holiday Designer Series Paper (to be the lids). For the bases (Old Olive and Cherry Cobbler cardstock) I scored around all edges at 1&1/4″. For the lids of DSP I scored at just OVER 1 & 1/4″ so that the lids fitted nicely without being too tight! To assemble each section (base and lid) I cut along the score line of two opposite edges. (It’s a bit tricky to explain, so here is a picture of what to do)….

How to snip base of box.

Either use Tombow Glue (my new favourite method of gluing 3D projects!!) or apply Sticky Strip on the small “square” pieces that you just snipped… these will tuck inside the box as you fold it up to create the box. Assemble the base and DSP to create your two halves. I used a paper piercer to poke a hole in the corner of the lids and threaded some Linen Thread through the hole. Put the boxes together by matching a DSP lid with a contrasting colour of cardstock base. I then adhered the Linen Thread to the base of each box so that the thread came out of the corner of the lid (keeping the base and lid together).

To create the Christmas Flower on top of the DSP lid, I simply punched out flowers in Old Olive and Cherry Cobbler cardstock with my Boho Blossoms punch – then layered them in any way I liked. Attach a Basic Rhinestone and it’s that quick!!!

Now you can fill your cute box with treats, jewellery or any small trinket and then all you need to do is hang it on the tree!

Thankyou for visiting – I hope you enjoyed this project. Please leave a comment if you found this helpful.