Birthday Gifts with We R Memory Keepers Punch Boards

Guys, I've been playing with the Envelope Punch Board (and a few others!) by We R Memory Keepers, and I've been having so much fun! Nick’s grandmother Gail’s birthday fell the week we were at camp, so we missed the party, but we got to see her on July 4th, and I gave her the birthday gifts I made for her then.

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Last year, for Mother’s Day I think, I made Gail some blank note cards. I punched out butterflies and flowers from scrapbook paper and sewed them to the fronts of the cards, and she loved them! I sure wish I had thought to snap a picture before I gave them to her. Anyway, I thought she would enjoy some smaller note cards for her birthday, and okay, I really wanted to make her something using my punch boards!

I actually made her two different kinds. One set of ten were little gift card sized cards, and each one had a different image or pattern embossed on the front. I just made these with stamps and embossing powder. These will be perfect for slipping a gift card into or attaching to a package or gift bag.

The others were a bit larger at 4 x 3.25 inches and suitable for mailing if she chooses. These were my favorite! Each card and envelope was unique in pattern.

I used fun cardstock for the cards from 4.5 x 6.5 inch stacks that I trimmed to 4 x 6.5 and folded in half. Then I used a Marvey Uchida Clever Lever Border Punch System that I got for crazy cheap at Tuesday Morning ($7.99 - score!) to punch a decorative border along the front edge.

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This border punch system is ah-may-zing! You can get different cartridges, which are normally about $11.99 each, but Tuesday Morning had them for $1.99! The punch cuts exactly 2 inches in each punch, which was why I trimmed the cards to 4 inches wide. There’s no guesswork with where to line up the punch for the next cut, because the guide has little slots where the punch fits, and there’s a pretty strong magnetic bar that keeps your paper from slipping out of place.

I made the envelopes from different patterned 6 x 6 sheets, and I LOVE how they turned out! I also punched a little flower out of sticker paper so she can seal them if she wants to mail them, and also a label for each so that she can write an address. I just included those in each envelope.

The labels were a little larger than I wanted them to be, but that was the size paper punch I had.

I also used all three of my other boards in making her gift, although I forgot to get a picture of the cute little gift bag I made with the Gift Bag Punch Board. First of all, I made her up some adorable little pillow boxes using the Pillow Box Punch Board.

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Some of these I made using 4.5 inch length cardstock, and some using 6 inch length cardstock. The smaller ones are perfect for something small like candy or earrings, and the bigger ones fit a gift card perfectly.

I also made her a couple of pairs of earrings, and I put them in this sweet little box I made using the Candy Box Punch Board. She had already untied the baker’s twine from one end to open it when I took this picture.

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I’ll go into a little more on how to use each of the punch boards in my upcoming posts, but for now I’ll just say that they are all just the best thing ever, ever, ever! None of the links in this post are affiliate links, and these products were not provided to me for review.

Embossed Mini Canvas Magnets

We're going to take a break from the Presser Foot Series because I've not had a chance to do some of the projects I need to do to show you how some of the feet work, but we will pick it back up in the near future.

But I do have a project for you all, and I looooove this one! Okay, you guys - embossing powder. I had never used it, although it always looked interesting to me. But I'm not much of a scrapbooker, and I'm more of a use-what-you've-got occasional card maker, so I never really had a good reason to justify buying the supplies.

But THEN...

an old friend asked me to make some cute travel pillow cases for her girls, and when I went to her house to drop them off she was doing a major pare down on her scrapbooking supplies. And right there in the middle of it all was a heat gun and several jars of embossing powder! So I came home with a new toy, and ever since then it's been EMBOSS ALL THE THINGS!

Well, I had these little canvases left over from Taylor's birthday party. And Hobby Lobby had a bunch more in black on crazy low clearance, so I grabbed a few packs. Last night I sat down with my embossing powders, heat gun, embossing pen, stamps, and pigment ink pads and made these awesome little canvas magnets!

Oh my goodness, SO CUTE! I love them! Taylor did some too. The one that says love is hers.

These are super easy. Just load up the stamp of your choice with pigment ink. It does need to be pigment ink, because otherwise it will dry before you can get the embossing powder to stick. I didn't know that beforehand, but fortunately I had several pads on hand already. It doesn't matter what color ink they are, because your embossing powder will cover them, unless you use clear powder, in which case you will want to use ink in the color you want the end result to be. That sentence felt awkward, but you get what I mean.

Anyway, stamp your design onto the canvas. If your canvas is stretched over a frame (some of mine were and some were just wrapped around a little board), you may want to rub the canvas from behind to make sure the stamp design fully transfers.

Once your design is on the canvas, lay the canvas on a sheet of paper, then sprinkle on your embossing powder, making sure to cover the whole design. Then shake the excess off onto the paper, and use the paper to funnel the excess back into the jar to use next time. You can gently tap the canvas on the table if there are clumps, and you can brush off any extra that didn't fall off with a small paintbrush. It will also help the powder to only stick to the ink if you rub your canvas ahead of time with a dryer sheet.

Now comes the magic. Turn your heat gun on and aim it at your design, a few inches away. Pretty soon you'll see the embossing powder start to melt, and when you do, start moving the gun over the whole design. You just want to leave it on there long enough to melt the powder. So much fun!

Look how shiny it turned!

You can even go back and add a second layer of embossing just so long as you're careful not to burn the design.

Just stick a magnet or two on the back using E6000 or even your glue gun and you're done!

I love these so much!

Next time I have any sort of crafty get together we are definitely doing these. Happy embossing!