Upcycling Brown Paper Packaging Idea #3

Posted on February 17, 2016 by admin

So to continue on with the series of blog posts regarding what to do with all of the brown paper packaging  that comes with my Stampin’ Up! orders here’s another simple idea. I make paper bags from it. These bags are either for holding card kits for Crafternoon Tea like the ones below.

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Or I use the mini treat bag thinlits and make packaging for small gifts, I prefer dry embossing the bags to make them look extra special.

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Then it can be as simple as adding a tag to the to of the bag to form a closure either by stapling or by glueing.

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The little bags hold a nice amount of items I think, the below was my swap for the Stampin’ Up! annual get together last year, I do love that dictionary background stamp.

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I will post some more uses for the brown paper packaging again soon, some ways will be obvious, others a little more obscure!

 

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Upcycling Brown Paper Packaging Idea #2

Posted on February 11, 2016 by admin

Okay so I thought I would share with you another popular use I have for the brown paper packaging that comes with all of our Stampin’ Up! orders – I use it in my bee smoker! Bet you didn’t see that use coming, until 6 months ago it never would have crossed my mind either.

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A bee hive was added to our garden late last year as I bought a Flow Hive as my birthday present last year and I’ve had a lot of fun learning about it all and no doubt I still have lots to learn over the coming years. My Pop used to have bee hives and trust me when I say the extraction method of the Flow versus a standard hive is so much faster, less mess & less stress. You can see our first extraction here:

One of my amazingly talented downline sent me this card as she was so impressed with the video of the hive, thanks Denise, completely love the card and that bee stamp (which I don’t own………..yet!).

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I particularly liked the fussy cut little bees and also the stamping on the envelope, such attention to detail! Anyway stay tuned for more ideas of what to do with brown packaging paper soon.

 

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Upcycling Brown Paper Packaging Idea #1

Posted on February 5, 2016 by admin

So every order that we get with Stampin’ Up! the boxes come packed with brown paper to keep the items inside the box from shifting around too much. It is lovely perforated brown paper that no doubt has a lot more uses before I put it into the recycling bin…………so I thought I would start some random posts to share with you various ways I use this paper again before it reaches the recycling bin.

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It folds down beautifully once you un-crumple it from the box and one of my favourite ways of up cycling it is for gift packaging as lets face it – the majority of gift wrapping gets binned straight away and with some ribbon, a belly band or a nice tag I think these gifts still look fantastic in their pre-loved brown paper.

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What do you think? Did I devalue the present by using upcycled paper?

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Ohh by the way – the purple package was a giant soy candle not another bottle of wine – not all my gift recipients get wine!

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If you have a different use or suggestion for using it, please let me know!

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Bloomin’ Heart Birthday

Posted on February 4, 2016 by admin

I made a card this week for my Nanna’s 91st birthday, an amazing lady who still lives on her own and goes to painting classes weekly, sadly due to arthritis she doesn’t patchwork anymore as the quilts got too heavy to handle.

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I am loving the new Bloomin’ Heart die, such laser cut precision and such an easy die to use! I have made a few different cards with it – this one was CASEd from another SU! demonstrator Amanda Bates, the colours were perfect for my Nanna.

The sentiment was achieved by using a Stampin’ Write marker and inking parts of the sentiment at a time (remembering to HUFF to rehydrate the ink before stamping) as the whole sentiment wouldn’t fit in the banner shape. Love how versatile that Sale-a-bration set is. The banner outline & die is from the Number of Years Bundle (stamps & dies) which if you purchase them together as a bundle rather than individually, you save 15%. The flowers were just cut out of Whisper White thick card stock and sponged with Lost Lagoon.

If you haven’t seen how easy it is to cut out shapes with these details dies check out the video here:

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Handmade Card Challenge 2016

Posted on January 25, 2016 by admin

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So the very lovely Shannon West started a challenge recently to reduce the FaceBook or SMS message for birthdays and reinstate the awesome handmade greeting card that arrives in your mail box. The old fashioned way the lets someone know that you think enough of them to get a card ready and mail it so that they have a physical reminder of how much they mean to you, not just a couple of quickly typed words that gets mangled with auto correct and lost in an electronic abyss.

You can sign up to receive a handmade card here (or you can sign up a friend to get sent one) and I will endeavour to get one sent out on time for them (if you don’t want a birthday card, but feel someone needs a get well or hello or other occasion please note that in the comments box for me and I’ll change the card accordingly).

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Going Global

Posted on January 16, 2016 by admin

The third make and take we had the opportunity to complete at the OnStage event for SU! demonstrators, well in my case I did it as a take and make later…..was using the Going Places suite. The textured impressions embossing folder in this suite is nothing short of gorgeous, we inked it with Sahara Sand and used it create the image on the card stock, then over stamped again with the sentiment in the same ink colour. The celestial image was stamped in black ink and embellished with some sequins.

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The globe stamp was stamped onto the beautiful marbled paper from Sale-a-bration called Perfectly Artistic and punched out with the 2″ circle punch. The Perfectly Artistic paper is marbled on one side & water coloured on the other and is only available until February 15th (or until stocks last).

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Yarloop & Waroona District Fires Appeal Auction

Posted on January 15, 2016 by admin

1935487_944136815675258_5538659276995708108_nSo it hasn’t been a good start to the year for a lot of people, we have had a devastating Bush Fire here in Western Australia that was started by lightening strikes, it is still not entirely under control. Over 128 homes were completely destroyed, 2 people died and the damage to other properties and native wildlife is almost incalculable.

The WA community have been amazing donating food, clothing, toiletries, livestock feed, veterinary products, furniture, school supplies, cars and more to those affected, however for the most part what is required is cash. The Lord Mayor’s fund is accepting donations to help those affected and a group of handmade artisans have got together for a charity auction of some super cute items with all of the proceeds going to the Fund. The auction is open until Sunday evening and includes free postage on all items (I think – I know mine have free postage).

You can see the full album of 29 items for auction here, I have donated three packs of 6 greeting cards with no reserve so some people might get a bargain!

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This item is not made by me, but it has to be the CUTEST item up for auction, made by Naomi from Stitching’ Titch, almost make me want Cherub to be little again!

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Flowering Fields notecard

Posted on January 14, 2016 by admin

I sent out some of the new Occasions and Sale-a-bration catalogues to existing customers recently and added a little notecard to say hello with them. It was made using some stamps that I got for FREE as a prize at the Stampin’ Up! OnStage event in November called Flowering Fields, you can also get it for free if you chose it as your Sale-a-bration reward. All of the flowers are based upon real flowers that grow in the South Pacific region, so I thought that was extra lovely.

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The sentiment is from Honeycomb Happiness (see I did use something from that set other than the bird stamp!) The corners on the notecard and the watermelon mat base were rounded with the envelope punch board – got to love how versatile that tool is. Below are all of the stamps that come in the set Flowering Fields in case you were wondering.

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Never Ending Minion Card

Posted on January 12, 2016 by admin

Recently at Crafternoon we made 3 never ending cards, the basic template for making one is here and the card base template is really easy to make, it’s the embellishing that takes the time! I did modify the base to suit metric sizing, so my four base pieces were 14cm x 7cm. They were scored along the longest side at 3.5cm and 10.5cm and at 3.5cm on the narrow side.

Cherubs teacher is Minions crazy and he requested a special card that would entertain her and that she would keep on her “minion shelf” in the class. So here was the result:

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Lots of little punch art creations (I love google – who knew there were purple creatures – I thought they were all yellow & blue).

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I also found out they like bananas – see how educated I am getting via google.

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The blank white square was where the greeting was written. I do prefer constructing the base and all of the punched pieces with the Tombow multipurpose glue as the last thing you want is for this card base to “pop” apart in heat or humidity!

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And yes, by the end of this card, it did feel like minions were going on forever! The recipient loved the card so that was all worth while. These never ending cards make fantastic mini photo type albums when you add pictures and definitely keep the recipients entertained for a while!

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Party Wishes two ways

Posted on January 11, 2016 by admin

I still have a couple more samples to share with you that we made at OnStage (well we got the kits and I took them home and made them up slightly differently to what was suggested after being inspired by lots of samples). It’s My Party is a fun product suite that is perfect for every age birthday. The stamp set & trio of punches can be purchased together in a bundle to save you 15% which is awesome value.

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As part of the make & take pack we were given I got a bonus piece of white card stock, so cheeky me stamped the sentiment panel twice and was super efficient with stamping & punching the other embellishment pieces so that when I went home I could actually make up two sample cards not just one! Essentially it is the same card, just orientated differently and layered up on different designer paper and coloured card stock. I am liking the thick combo Bakers twine, it gives a really nice finish to the cards.

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These new little punches are fabulous as they punch out just inside the stamped image shape, so no more white edge to the punched images! I did add a touch of Crystal Effects to the cupcakes and the balloon to give them some shine.

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