Unique Gift Wrap Ideas

Hi everyone! I’m back from a wonderful weekend creative retreat with friends and I’ve got lots to share this week. But first, I want to share some fun ideas for gift wrapping those awesome presents you’ll be making over the holidays-I bought a wonderful set of 4 vintage paint-by-number 4-season pictures on Etsy back in September and, having yet to hang them, found they made beautiful wrapping paper for the CDs of custom Vintage Monograms I wanted to share during my visit to SC Johnson in October. I color-copied each painted picture onto plain 8.5″ x 11″ paper, the perfect size for CD cases, wrapped and tied up with Divine Twine and tagged with vintage gummed canning labels.I think they turned out lovely.For more fun ideas for out-of-the-box gift wrapping for the holidays, please check out my post over at SC Johnson’s Family Economics HERE.

Disclosure: I am a compensated blogger for SC Johnson.

Small speech bubble39 Comments | Posted in Christmas, Family Economics, Holiday Crafts, Paper Crafts, SC Johnson, Uncategorized | Tagged ,
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Flat Friends: Mrs. Jacka’s Cherubs

Early this year when I attended the blog conference, Blissdom10, I brought along my friend, TidyMom, who was unable to attend, in the form of a Flat Friend. Loosely based on the Original Flat Stanley Project, I digitally designed a cartoony body with various outfits for different occassions, and digitally placed TidyMom’s sweet mug onto the top of each. Not only was Flat TidyMom fun to share at the conference, but she even got a smooch from Harry Connick, Jr. himself!The post about Flat Friends reached far enough that a sweet K/1 teacher at Howlong Public School, NSW, Australia, named Mrs. Jacka, contacted me with a special request. Her cherubs, as she lovingly refers to them, were soon to begin the Flat Stanley project and so wanted to have look-alike flat friends of their own. She sent me a photo of two of her students for school uniform reference and I created a little boy and girl set of flat bodies and emailed them to the class to print, place their own face photos onto and cut out.Here are the darling photographs I recently received last week of Mrs. Jacka’s precious cherubs with their own happy little Flat Friends all ready to go on wonderful adventures.

Disclaimer: After reading this post, one could assume I do this for anyone who writes to me with a darling request. And I have to tell you, I actually would do that for anyone if it were actually possible, but it simply is not. So this post is not to solicit more flat friends projects, but just to share some extraordinary cuteness and inspiration.

On another note…I’m off to St. Dorothy’s Retreat without any electronics. Just pencils, sketchpads and books. I’ll be back in a few days! Have a wonderful weekend!

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Vintage Alphabet and Christmas Books

I’m just crazy about books. Not novels, but books on art, typography, printing, sign painting, design. Old, rare, whatever! Today I’m sharing a gorgeous ornamental Italian alphabet dated 1839 from my first edition ALPHABETS book by Laurence Scarfe. Each letter different in illustration and all printed to beautiful Pepto-pink pages. Click on images for larger JPG versions. These would be so beautiful framed, used for greeting cards, collage, most anything! If you make something with them, I’d love to see it!And, speaking of books…Read my latest post over at SC Johnson’s Family Economics about collecting Christmas books!

Disclosure: I am a compensated blogger for SC Johnson.

Small speech bubble22 Comments | Posted in Christmas, Decorating, Family Economics, Free digital downloads, Free Jpgs, free vintage art, Paper Crafts, SC Johnson, Vintage Ephemera | Tagged , , , ,
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