Creative Gift Cards: Inside a Snow Globe

I love to give and receive gift cards but I also really appreciate a good presentation. For my friend who is a big coffee fan, I gave her a Starbucks gift card inside a homemade snow globe.

Starbucks has these super cute snowmen gift cards this year that work perfectly for snow globes. 

I only needed a few ingredients to make my own snow globe and I already had everything on hand in my house. Bonus!  I used an old pickle jar. I dumped out the last few pickles and cleaned the jar. 

If you want your snow globe to last awhile, be sure to use distilled water or cooled boiled water. This helps prevent mildew and cloudy water. I added a tablespoon of light corn syrup to make the glitter and sequins fall more slowly. 

To create the scene, I added little bottle trees from Fancy Pants Designs in front of the Starbucks card. I used Gorilla Glue to adhere them. Be sure that you use an adhesive that will not break down in water. 

I wrapped the Starbucks snow globe with a gift card that said: In case of emergency, break glass. Of course, she wouldn't really need to break the glass to get the ornament. Just turn the jar right side up and unscrew the lid!

Thanks so much for stopping by.  Have a great weekend. I'll be back on Monday with tutorial for paper ornaments.  

Let It Snow: Using Paint On A Layout

We don't get a lot of snow in the Carolinas but when we do, it's cause for celebration.  When my son was 11 months old, he saw his first snow.  

For this layout, I used the cute Bundled Up line from Crate Paper, which was included in the December Kit at My Creative Scrapbook.  The kit was perfect for this photo of my little one being pulled around in the snow in his beloved red wagon. 

My favorite sheet of patterned paper in Bundled Up is this red snowflake one with the cute polka dots on the flip side. I only had one sheet of this double-sided paper, so I carefully cut out the middle and flipped it over. 

I wanted to bring in another color on this layout and chose an aqua paper with big pink polka dots. It was a little too much, though, so I toned it down with paint. I thinned the paint with water then white washed the pink polka dots. 

I loved the snowy effect the paint gave the paper.  Now the layout has a pop of color but it doesn't overwhelm the page.  

One last look. Thanks for stopping by! I'll be back on Wednesday with a tutorial for a shaker card. 

Echo Park Paper: So Happy Together

Last month, I had an extra fun surprise in my design team package from My Creative Scrapbook.  The kit club releases several kits each month and in addition to my regular kit, the owner also sent me the August album kit.  It was filled with Echo Park Paper and lots of fun embellishments. Yay!  I couldn’t wait to play.

Today, I have one of the layouts I made with this kit, which featured EP's So Happy Together collection.  I love this scene paper.  It’s super cute, easy to work with, and I thought the bare pine trees looked a bit like winter. So I decided to make a winter scene.

Using a scene paper makes quick work of a page because much of the design is already done for you.  Here, I used a photo to cover up part of the scene in the lower right (it was more houses and trees) and then let the scene on the paper guide the rest of my design.  

To make the snowclouds, I added white buttons from the kit.  I had them overlap the edges of the clouds a bit so the clouds would look heavy with snow.  The paper had white doodled stitches around the frame and I stitched over those with a machine to add a subtle touch of texture

I added a title next to the photo.  The alphas on the letter sticker sheet weren’t quite the color I wanted so I used an acrylic paint dabber to recolor them.  It worked like a charm.

Here’s a photo of the MCS August Album Kit.  It’s packed full of yumminess.  For more information on this kit or other kits at My Creative Scrapbook, please visit here.

  

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