Valentine's Day Crafts and Snow

Happy almost Valentine's Day! Today's post is a long one, which means you might want to prepare yourself with your favorite beverage before plowing ahead. I've been a busy bee lately, crafting up a storm for Valentine's Day, classes, and volunteer gifts as well as offering a free class to 28 ladies at our annual Europe-Wide Ladies Retreat held last week. Thank goodness for friends who willingly stay up until 2 a.m. to cut cardstock and put course materials together or I would never have made it through (overflowing gratitude to Marilyn and Tasha) The unfortunate reality: I didn't take a single picture of the class or the projects I demonstrated! Sigh....these things happen but I could have kicked myself for not bringing my camera along. Back to the post at hand: the project shown above is from a box template available free on Lauren Meader's new business website and one which I made as a gift for my technique club attendees in January. I revamped the design for Valentine's Day and made 14 of these beauties for the wonderful ladies who volunteer with me at the high school student store.

The box template is the size and shape of a crayon box, perfect for dropping in Russell Stover's chocolate marshmallow hearts, or other yummy treats. The designer paper with the paper flower attached is actually a belly band that slides right off. I'm loving the new Stampin' Up! designer papers and embellishments in our current mini catalog!

Same paper set, now made into a card. I case'd this design from someone on Splitcoaststampers and I'm sorry to admit that I couldn't find the designer to give them credit. Whoever you are, thank you for a simple yet classy card design! I've really got to work on the lighting when I take my photos but sometimes it's better to take a bad picture and have something to post than no picture at all.

Jordan wanted to do goodie bags for his class for Valentine's Day but he wanted to do something unique. None of the suggestions I made seemed to appeal to him until we happened upon a project by Debbie Olson on Nichole Heady's blog that featured an airplane treat made out of a pack of gum and a matching tag. Several years ago we learned how to make candy airplanes at a Family Readiness Group meeting with Joe's unit and Jordan thought that would be the perfect "unique" treat for his class. I printed the font for the tag on Print Shop using a free Creating Keepsakes font called CK Alis Handwriting, then stamped and colored the airplane with Jordan's help. The airplane is from the retired Stampin' Up! set called Toy Box. The heart is punched from the Stampin' Up! Heart to Heart punch and leftover red cardstock scraps. I'm determined to work my way through my scraps!

Here's a close-up: Joe and Jordan ended up coloring in the airplanes for me so I could finish tying all the bags off with curling ribbon. I forgot to make room on the tag for a hole to put the ribbon through so I just attached the tag to the bag with mini Glue Dots.

A close-up of the airplane, made of one roll of Mentos, two unwrapped Lifesavers for wheels, a pack of Bubble Yum, and a rubber band to hold it all in place. We had a serious discussion on whether or not to cover the gum and mints with Valentine's Day paper but Jordan felt it would be too "girlie" and that some of the kids in his class might be "grossed out" by all the hearts and love if we got carried away. I guess girls still have cooties in the fourth grade :) The propeller was attached by pushing a paper piercer into the front of the mints to create a small hole and inserting a silver brad in to hold it. The propeller is also made from leftover red cardstock scraps and the Stampin' Up! Word Window punch. You can design a smaller version of the plane with small Doublemint or Juicy Fruit gum packs and long Tootsie Rolls for the body. Jordan will have to give these to his classmates next week since today ended up being a Snow Day and there's no school! I'm sure his classmates will enjoy them, even if they're received late.

Speaking of snow, we've had an unseasonable amount of snow this year, extremely unusual for the area of Germany we live in. You can see here that Jordan is enjoying the snow quite a bit!

"The Boys" decided to go outside and build snowmice instead of snowmen: they both play MouseHunt on Facebook and thought it would be cool to make a snowmouse representative of the mice on the game. Joe is the supposed grown-up on the right...hee, hee!

Thanks for hanging in there to the very end! I've got more projects and miscellaneous stuff to post but will spare you for the time being. Until next time....