'Tis the season...for wrapping gifts

I can't believe I found the time this week, but I'm glad I did!  I wrapped with paper, tissue, tape, string, ribbon, bows, and gift bags.  After about 5 hours, my lower back started to hurt, but I kept on going for just a little bit longer.  It's not that I had a ton of things to wrap, it's just that I had a lot of crafty fun with the process.

Here are a few peeks:

1.  Plain brown dollar store gift bags + simple black stamping = cute, unique, thrifty gift wrap.

The dollar store bags come in packs of 2 or three for a dollar.  The stamps are from Michael's for about $1.50 each.

2.  I've used the same ornament for about 4 or 5 weddings now, but I still love it.  The mirrored decoration is from the home decor aisle of the dollar store.  I wrinkled up and re-flattened tissue paper for the innermost layer, wrapped that in polka-dotted cellophane and wrapped that all up with a 2m x 40cm piece of silvery tulle.

Full Disclosure: Not everything got wrapped, I must admit.  In an act of true classiness, I handed two of my colleagues their gifts "wrapped" in the brown paper bags they came in from the LCBO. :)  They didn't seem to mind one bit!  Wrap some, leave some: it's all about balance, I guess. ;)

Just smile, smile, smile.

I'm madly preparing for the beginning of the school year, but I found a few minutes of calm in a 10-minute craft. I couldn't find any notecards I liked to send home as my beginning of the year handwritten notes to parents about their wonderful children, so I picked up some supplies from the bargain bins at Michael's and got to work. All that's involved is a quick stamp on a die-cut card, made special by the tie-dye effect you get from pressing half the stamp into blue ink and half into green. Here are the results:




Something I did not know until I was cleaning up and wanted to do it properly:
-spongy pigment inkpads should be stored upright and tightly sealed
-felt inkpads (traditional inkpads) should be stored upside-down to keep the ink at the inkpad surface.
Now I know.

Cost of the project:
$4.50 for 3 packages of 8 die-cut cards with envelopes
$3.00 for 2 colours of stamp pads
$1.50 for the "smile" stamp
$0.00 for the butterfly stickers - found them in a box of stuff in my office
-------------------
$9.00, or approximately 38 cents per card


To finish it off, I stamped the envelope as well with a rubber stamp from my collection. :) (Once you start stamping things, it's hard to stop.)