Amuse Studio November Blog Hop

Hello, welcome to My Paper Paradise!  Today I am joining some very talented ladies from Amuse Studio in our monthly blog hop - can you believe it's November already? - If you are joining us in the Hop, you should have come here from Angie, if not why not grab a coffee and start back at the beginning with Samantha's post and keep on hopping until you get back to me?

This months theme is the Holiday season, as I indicated yesterday, I have chosen some non-traditional colours that still say winter to me.  Here we go:

Looks like a standard enough card from the front - pretty, but ordinary.  Open it up though and ....

It's a gift card holder!  I don't know about you - but I am old enough to not like giving gift cards or money as a gift - I was brought up to believe that this was the lazy option if I didn't want to spend time and energy selecting the perfect gift, now I'm older and I have children and nieces and nephews of my own, I recognize that sometimes it IS the most thoughtful gift to give, in these cases presenting it nicely like this makes me feel so much better. 

Now I'm going to give you instructions on how to make one of these - BUT I should in all honesty also give you a warning first - if you are lucky enough to get a thank you letter back, the lucky recipient may forget to thank you for the gift card itself, while they are waxing lyrical about the holder - don't laugh, it's happened to me!!

I've put a sketch diagram for constructing the card base at the bottom of the post for those of you that need a visual, here are some words for the rest of you.

Using your base card (I used bermuda polka-dot) cut a piece 5" x 11".  Score at 3.5", 4.5", 5.5", 6.5" and 7.5".  Fold into a sort of W with an extra valley as shown.

Holding all the center folds (the peaks) together and using your gift-card as a guide, punch a hole at the top and bottom - you want the card to fit quite snugly.  Thread with ribbon and knot..

Now all we have to do is decorate the front.

Because I wanted to enclose a coffee gift card, this snowman with his cup of coffee was an obvious choice for an image.  I cut some random hills on two pieces of card to act as the snowy base and stamped the snowman and the sentiment - because black ink seemed to be too much of a contrast, I used slate which is a lot softer - and then coloured the image extremely carefully with Copics to prevent smudging of the pigment ink.

A die cut tree in bermuda and a medium snowflake complete the scene.  I used the tiny strips of sugar pearls from the mixed pack to decorate the tree - in the past these are the ones I get left over - this year I'm going to have to get extra packs JUST for the tiny ones.  Because it's Christmas, I also put glitter on the snowflake and on the top edge of the two layers of snow.  

All the supplies for this card are from Amuse Studio and are available at my online web store here.  If your order is above $150, be sure to contact me direct so that we can get you your free stuff!

I hope this has given you some inspiration, I'm going to be focusing of gift card holders all week - so if you want some other ideas be sure to pop back, but for now why not hop on over to Jennifer's and see the wonderful project that she has to share with you?

supplies:

stamps: chill of winter

paper: sugar, bermuda, bermuda polka-dot

ink: slate, sky

misc: sugar pearls, diamond glitter, tree die, snowflake die, sugar organdy polka-dot ribbon, Copics - Y38, BG10, BG49, 110