christmas.joy

This Christmas I am spreading holiday spirit with a card+goody combination! Buying gifts for everyone can be a hassle, so I'm hoping this will make things easier.

I bought these Christmas cards, printed on recycled paper, and they came with matching envelopes; 18 for 5 bucks! I love a good deal!

Supplies I used: holiday tissue paper, ribbon, clear cellophane bags, hot-glue gun, scissors, label maker or paper punch, colored paper for labels.

I folded the tissue paper in half and measured to make sure it will fit in the cellophane bag. Then I cut accordingly and placed the paper in the bag.

When I had my envelopes ready, it was time to add the goodies!

I picked up about 12 of these angel ornaments from a gift shop in Lima! Both a travel and a Christmas gift in one!

I added an ornament to each of the baggies I made, tied with ribbon and curled it. I also had to trim the tops, because they ended up being too long.

Afterwards I hot-glued them to the tops on the paper envelopes ( this one got two, because it's for someone extra special:).

IT'S LABEL TIME! Can I just tell you how excited I am about this label maker?! It is amazing! I've been making labels and punching paper since I got it last week at this lovely stamp shop.

I punched out about a dozen labels and used a glue stick to glue them in the top right corner on the envelopes.

Ta-Da!!! Now all I have to do is write the names on them! (I put them in the place of the stamps, because I'll see everyone this holiday season plus I'd have to insert the whole thing in a shipping envelope if I were to send it out anyway.)

The best thing about this particular paper punch?? You can use the little bracket cut-outs

as tiny mustaches!!!

Happy Wednesday Everyone!!!

tassels.tassels.tassels.

I love, among other things, tassels! Because it's hat weather in Seattle and I am in Lima, I decided it was time to put some tassels on my oh-so-Peruvian hat. I bought it in Arequipa during our Easter vacation and I've been wanting to fancy it up!

Today is the day.

I took my tassel-less hat and some alpaca yarn (I live in Peru after all), then decided how big I wanted my tassels to be and made a loop twice the length of that. I had two different sizes of tassels, a small one (about 2" long) on top and a big one ( about 4") at the bottom.

I added yarn to the loop until I had the desired thickness.

 
I took my 5.5mm crochet hook and stuck it through one of the knitted strings. Then looped through the bunched yarn. It was a little hard at first and took some wiggling, but in the end I WON!

Then I tied a piece of yarn around both the pulled through yarn and the knitted string, to create the "top" of the tassel.

The bottom of the tassel was uneven. I trimmed it with a pair of scissors, holding the body of it in my fist and slowly cutting off the pieces that stuck out.

                                I did the same to create the bottom, bigger tassel and repeated for the other side.

                                        TAA-DAA!! Now I have a sweet hat with llamas and handmade tassels.

Watch out Seattle weather, here I come!

                                              P.S. The writing on the hat says "Huaraz", it's a town in Peru (=