Quick Tags for Last Minute Gifts

Merry Christmas to you all on this last day before Christmas Eve! I hope you are all ready for Christmas, your shopping is done, parties are planned, home is decorated and your presents are wrapped. For the most part, I am ready and so excited! I love the magic of Christmas and all of the fun activities it brings. However, underneath my tree right now are presents for my parents, my in-laws, for various cousins and siblings and some for my husband. What is missing are all the gifts for my kids! Those presents are still hidden deep in the confines of my walk-in closet and various corners of the storage room (my kids better not be reading this!)

I have had a VERY hard time wrapping those presents for kids-- we have all been so busy the last few weeks and when I'm home, they are right there! By the time they're in bed, I am ready to go to bed too or I've got some other projects to do. And so, my post today offers you a quick gift tag idea for those last gifts you haven't wrapped yet-- maybe some of you out there are like me and haven't managed to find a chance to pull out all those kids' gifts and get them wrapped. My plan for late tonight is to finish that wrapping and then use these gift tags for my kids presents:

I love using photo tags for my kids' presents-- it gets old writing "from Mom & Dad" on so many packages (they usually each get several from us under the tree, times that by the 3 of them). Plus, they love to look for their faces under the tree and know those surprises are for them.

I printed out some quick recent photos of my kids just on regular printed paper, as most likely these will just get lost and later thrown away in all the mess of unwrapping on Christmas morning. Then I punched a scalloped square tag from Echo Park's Wintertime papers to attach my pictures too. I love the colors in this paper line!

Then I went to work embellishing them with some gems and pearls (for our current challenge) and other embellishments such as lace and Prima flowers. I used letter stickers from the WinterPark kit to put their initial on each tag along with a few snowflake and border stickers from the same sticker sheet.

I think photo tags are a really fun way to personalize the gifts you are giving, here are a few other suggestions for types to make:

*For presents from your family, make a tag that includes a picture of all of you

*For presents from grandparents, make a tag that includes a picture of the grandparent when they were young, this way the tag becomes a keepsake as well (I did this several years ago when helping my grandmother with her shopping and wrapping, the tags were a huge hit among my aunts, uncles and cousins-- not many of them had pictures of my grandmother when she was young and they were delighted to get them)

*For any family presents, make tags that include pictures from Christmases past, then you can reminisce about previous holidays while celebrating the current one.

Now that I've got my pile of tags ready to go, I'll be up late tonight wrapping those kids' gifts and anxiously awaiting the light in their faces when they tear them open on Christmas morning. To all our Beary Scrap fans out there, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Pearls and Gems at The Beary Scrap

Just one week until the big day and hopefully you have already sent out your Christmas cards (ok, I admit it, I just picked up pictures for my cards today and so I will be dutifully addressing them this weekend so I can get them mailed by Monday!). But in case you are still looking for card ideas, I am so excited to share you with my card today that goes along with our brand new biweekly challenge at The Beary Scrap-- Pearls or Gems.


I made my first Penny the Penguin and I think she turned out absolutely adorable!!!! I added a Santa Hat from JoLee's boutique and a little bow made out of Martha Stewart Candy Cane Baker's Twine.


For my card I used the brand new Wintertime collection from Echo Park. I am in love with these papers! They are perfect for Christmas or just for any wintertime pictures. I especially love the gray, as it's a non-traditional Christmas color but not too overwhelming. I stitched around the edges and added some Diamond Stickles for a little snowflake shimmer. I added a larger punched snowflake and used some red gems to decorate it.



Here is a peek at the inside of my card, I used a Martha Stewart Around the Edge punch to do snowflakes around my entire square and then saved some of the snowflakes and put them on the front with more red gems.

This is a great challenge to enter, just create a new project and include gems or pearls and link it to our challenge by midnight on Dec. 31st EST (you'll be up that night anyway, ringing in the New Year!) and you just might win a Beary Scrap voucher!

Christmas Candy Winner!

Thanks to all you ladies who left me great comments about why you love Christmas and entered my Christmas Candy giveaway, I appreciate you! And the winner is. . . . .

(pardon my un-technology tonight, I just wrote down the numbers and drew one!)



#4-- Judy

Congratulations!

Please email me your mailing address Judy (coopjamie@gmail.com) and I'll get your candy in the mail to you and a Merry Christmas to you all!

Christmas Goodies for You!!!

Only 10 days until Christmas and here is a chance for you to get some great goodies for yourself! You deserve it! Kimm has just announced the release of two new Tear Bear patterns, Marcy the Mouse and Monty Moose, aren't they cute?


And, if you order both before midnight on Dec. 16th, you will also get a free baby Tear Bear pattern which won't be released until next year. Grab yours now!

AND, you have one more day to enter my Christmas candy for a chance to win a few more Christmas goodies. Click here to view the guidelines and Good Luck! I hope you're enjoying the holidays, wherever you may be or however you may be celebrating!

Dear Santa: A Sketch from The Beary Scrap

Here is another Christmas layout based on our current Beary Sweet sketch at the Beary Scrap Design Team Blog.


To create a double 12 x 12 layout this week from the sketch, I stretched it out over two pages, expanding and adding a few more elements (photos) and quickly drew out my own version of the original design:

My Mind's Eye Holly Jolly paper was just perfect for this sketch as I could use the Santa paper and leave Santa as one large element on the far right side of the paper (I love the Vintage look of this Santa plus the beautiful deep red, greens and browns of the paper!)

Taking my inspiration from my fellow DT Susan's card that used this paper a few weeks ago, I added red and green Stickles to my Santa to give him a little shine. Replacing the snowflakes that were on the original sketch, I have used holly leaves cut from a good old Sizzix die in the two corners of my layout.

I wanted my die cuts to have a little dimension, so I actually cut out two for each holly leaf, inked both edges with, adhered one to the paper and then popped up the second one on top of the first with a foam square. Then the top leaves are edged with more Stickles and finished off with rhinestone"berries."



You've seen lots of great examples of this sketch in the last two weeks and now we can't wait to see yours! Make sure to enter our current Beary Sweet Challenge before 11:59 EST on Dec. 14th for a chance to win a $20.00 voucher from some sweet goodies from The Beary Scrap. Maybe you can get some of those scrap goodies that are on your Christmas list!

A Beary Sweet Snowflake Sketch!

I'm dreaming of a WHITE CHRISTMAS-- and my fellow Beary Scrap DT member, Susan, must have read my mind as she has provided our DT with such a great way to start off to December, with this very sweet sketch, complete with lovely snowflakes and swirls for a wintry day. (Though you could substitute anything you want for those snowflakes!) I was so excited to work with this great sketch.



I used the new Midnight Frost line from Bo Bunny and some of my Christmas morning pictures from last year (no, they are not all scrapbooked yet, I better hurry up before I have new Christmas morning pictures!). I rotated my sketch clockwise 45 degrees and came up with this single 12 x 12:



These Midnight Frost papers are gorgeous-- with dark blues, purples and greys and already have those great swirls worked right into the pattern. I used both dark blue (Faded Jeans) Distress Ink from Tim Holtz and silver ink to edge all of my papers and even used my brand new Marth Stewart around the edge Snowflake punch for one of them. These punches are really fun and add so much. They are also very easy to use!

To add the swirls from the sketch, I traced some swirls on using a stencil and then handstitched them which did take a bit longer but I think was definitely worth the time, I love how they turned out!


Now it's your turn, please join us at The Beary Scrap Design Team and Challenge Blog, and use this sketch to create your own project to enter in our current challenge, which goes from now until 11:59 EST on Dec. 14th. Your project just might win you a voucher to The Beary Scrap online store!

Merry Christmas Candy!!!!

I love the Christmas season and I just wanted to share a little of it with all of you so I am offering this little bit of Christmas candy to one lucky winner:




To be eligible to win, just do the following:

1) Become a follower if you aren't already! (Thank you so much to all of you who are!)
2) Post the candy on your blog to help spread the word-- either on your sidebar or in a new post, either way is fine, just link it back to my original post.
3) Leave a comment to this post telling me something you love about Christmas.

This candy will be open until Dec. 15th at midnight, MST, after that I will pick random winner and mail off this candy to you just in time for Christmas. I hope you all have a lovely December and spread some Christmas cheer wherever you go!