Whimsy ~ New Release Week Day One

Hey there my lovely blogworld pals. I have a fun DT creation for you today to celebrate the launch of the December Digital Designs Release at Whimsy Stamps. There are some incredibly beautiful papers, images and sentiment sets being released today. This is the first of my release week creations, so come on back on Sunday to see the next one too. Pop on over to the Whimsy Stamps Blog to see what my incredibly talented teamies have done with the gorgeous December release. So inspirational!

I love digital papers and all that you can do with them. So guess who was more than a little excited to be invited to join the Whimsy Digital Design Divas! Aha!! I have been swooning over the gorgeous digital papers at Whimsy ever since they relaunched their digital products! So I'm in a little bit of heaven working with these gorgeous digital designs. Bearing in mind that Christmas is fast approaching, I decided to use the liner from a box of scented reeds to create a tall box that could be used for wrapping cookies, a bottle of spirits or anything else you can think of that would fit that shape! Two A4 sheets of Tracy's gorgeous Christmas digital paper was a perfect fit for the body of the box. I then printed another sheet to create the cover for the top and inside of the lid. Here's a wee picture tutorial of this process. The paper I used is from a set called Winter Pines 2. It's such a gorgeous set of papers. The new release is full of fabulous papers and they're so easy to work with and create with.

I created a closure for the box with magnets and covered them with the paper, so they didn't stand out when the lid was open. A nice tidy elegant finish. I was well pleased with how that came together!

The next thing I did was create a pretty bow to sit atop the box to finish it. So this was done with an A4 piece of paper printed on both sides and then cut into long thin strips. Four are the full length of the paper, four are a little shorter, which I just snipped randomly a bit off the top. Each of the long strips was about an inch wide. The next four, ever so slightly narrower to fit them all from the same page. I could have stuck together the remaining off cuts to create the centre loop, but chose to print another page, so there was no seam to contend with. Either option would work though. Here's a wee picture tutorial of the bow in creation. The measurement in the bottom middle square is the length I cut the centre loopy. As you can see, all the lengths of paper, were first taped together to create circles, and then the middles pinched in to create the loops to layer up. I layered them in alternating directions, then finally created the 4.5 inch long centre loopy and put all the layers together with double sided tape. Liquid glue also works fine, I just prefer the quick stick that tape offers.

Of course, my box needed a tag once it was finished and we have the most fab sentiment sheets which have images too that can so easily be turned into tags for Christmas parcels. You can colour your own, or as I did, use the pre-coloured version, which I just added some glitter details to, for a little extra interest. The set I used is called Christmas Wish Sentiments. I created two tags with two different images from this set. 

I cut two different tag sizes, a larger size from the gorgeous digital paper and a smalled one which I printed the image/wordart from the sentiment set. I just love the way this 'Noel' is shaded. I couldn't have done it better myself, so all I did was add some glitter to the snowy drifts. The paper this parcel is wrapped in (my Swedish bestie's birthday parcel!) is from the same paper set as I made the box and tags ~ Winter Pines 2.

I thought this sweet Robin was such a gorgeous image for a Christmas tag. He's been layered up the same way as the wordart above, with a touch of sparkly glitter. I added some silver glitter ribbon, button twine and 3 wee jingle bells to both tags. The edge of the digital paper tag, I distressed with some white chalk ink.

Head on over to the Whimsy Inspirations Blog to see all the fab creations on offer. Come back and join us on the 15th too for a new challenge at Whimsy Stamps Inspirations Challenges. The current challenge is still running if you're ready to join in with your Whimsy Anything Goes creation. I'll be back again soon with my next Whimsy Stamps release week creation. So watch this space!

Hugs to you all and happy crafting,

Challenge Entries:

Not Just Cards: Anything Goes

Shopping Our Stash: #331 ~ Snow Much Fun

Always Fun Challenges: #34 ~ Anything Goes

Colour Crazy Challenge: #47 ~ Anything Goes

Simon Says Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

Moving Along With The Times: Christmas Animals (wee Robin on the tag)

The Paper Shelter: #320 ~ 3 Different Embellishments (Ribbon/Twine, Bells, Glitter)