Peek-a-Boo Monkey Box

In May I participated in a number of challenges on a demonstrator website whilst others were at our annual Stampin' Up! national convention and one was to make a really cute little gift box called a peek-a-boo box, which at the time I did in pink and green and decorated with a water colour flower. I re-made mine recently to match the card I made last week.

How cute is this monkey??? I made the box to hold chocolates, but it could also be a gorgeous gift box for hair clips, jewellery or some other small treasure! 

Stamps: Fox and Friends, Eat Chocolate, Afterthoughts (level 1 hostess set)

Ink: Real Red, Chocolate Chip

Card Stock: Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Real Red

Accessories: Stamping Sponges, paper snips, Dimensionals, Early Expresso 1/8" grosgrain ribbon, thin window sheet, corner rounder punch, 1 3/8" circle punch. 

Barrel of Monkeys

I think if you were a child of the 60-70's you grew up knowing what the game Barrel of Monkeys was - whilst shopping a while back I was amused to see that amidst all of the techno toy gadgets available these days, you can still purchase the good old Barrel of Monkeys! So here's my take on it........

The wooden planks of the barrel were hand drawn and the binding rings were another piece of card stock. The final card had a sentiment stamped in Chocolate Chip on the bottom left corner of the card. The leaves are from the two step bird punch and some were raised up on Dimensionals so as to give a more realistic effect and the top monkey was popped up as well and from the close up below, you can see how I hooked his tail over the leaves. 

Stamps: Fox & Friends

Ink: Old Olive, Chocolate Chip.

Card Stock: Old Olive, Certainly Celery, Whisper White, Early Expresso

Accessories: Paper snips, Dimensionals, Two Step Bird Punch, XL oval punch, Two-way glue pen, Stampin' Sponge.

Punched Circle Fox & Friends

Well since I have an almost 4yo I always seem to be in need of childrens cards & when I saw the Fox & Friends stamp set come out in the autumn/winter mini I knew it would get a LOT of use at our house! I saw some cards on a blog by Andrea B. and decided to modify one a bit and got the below result (can you tell I'm on a Kraft & Baja Breeze colour combo theme at the moment - I also had to use the Sanded background stamp which I just bought & I love it, can't wait to use it with my Totally Tools stamp set!):

You could change the sentiment or colours to make it for any occassion, but I wanted a young boys card - pretty cute hey! I added the details of the lions face, fox nose, & turtle eye with a black Stampin' write marker pen. To get the layered effect of the lions mane I stamped him twice in So Saffron & once in Pumpkin Pie and cut out the mane fromt eh later & the face from the former and just stuck them together - too easy, especially since I invested in some Stampin' Up! Paper Snips #103579, initially I did baulk at the price a little, but wow they are by far the best paper snips I've ever used & they are really sharp and have really fine points for cutting out details - it makes doing any cutting an absolute breeze now.

Stamps: Fox & Friends, On Your Birthday, Sanded

Inks: Old Olive, So Saffron, Baja Breeze, Chocolate Chip & Pumpkin Pie
Cardstock: Whisper White, Kraft, Old Olive, So Saffron, Baja Breeze, Chocolate Chip & Pumpkin Pie
Accessories: 1 3/8” circle punch, 1 ¾” circle punch, Spiral punch, ¼” old olive grosgrain ribbon SNAIL, paper trimmer.

More cupcakes............

Well May must be cupcake month - as it turned out this week was my son's friends birthday and I made some simple cupcakes to take to kindergarten to help celebrate as their family has been having a manic month. Of course after last weeks swap I had to make some little cupcake toppers or cupcake picks to decorate them for all the little monkeys in the class!

This time I made sure I double sided them and could customise the back with the event - apparently the children loved them which is nice. Of course I also decided to decorate the chuppa chup lollipops in a similar theme (you can get plain old chuppa chups anytime, but for a 4th birthday it has to be something a bit special - no??) and after some playing and a few prototypes, a bit of blog surfing this was the result............

See even with my very average photography you get the basic idea - they are flowerpots, adorned with little monkeys and customised on the back to match the cupcake picks! The idea was not my own - I completely plagerised it from Dawn. However Australian lollipops seems to be of different dimensions, so mine were scored at 5/8" and 2 1/2" rather than her dimensions and of course I didn't put flowers and ribbon on mine either, I kept the monkey theme going!

Stamps: Fox & Friends (autumn/winter mini catalogue)

Ink: Chocolate chip

Cardstock: Whisper White, Patterns Pack II DSP (hostess level 1), garden green

Accessories: scallop circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, awl, mat pack, gold brads, stampin' dimensionals, paper cutter with scoring & cutting blades.

The kindergarten class seemed happy with the result - although given they are 3-5 year olds I'm not sure they are too fussy how sugary treats are presented, so long as they get them!

Happy stamping,

Ann