RobinsCraftRoom.com

Robin Messenheimer, Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator

3D Projects

A One-of-a-Kind Gift!

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Aloha, all!

I am at a stage in my life where it’s rare that I either give or receive gifts at Christmas time. That’s not to say I’m neglected nor that I’m neglecting others. It’s just the way it is. That’s why my sharing a gift that I made for a friend is a rare occurrence. But it’s one of those times that I just knew that I could make the perfect gift for my friend. And, of course, I had to make a box to hold it.

First the Box

It would not surprise me if you haven’t seen this paper before. That’s because it’s brand new Stampin’ Up! Specialty Designer Series Paper that will be in their newest Mini Catalog. That catalog runs from January 4 – June 30, 2021. The paper set just has three prints, all of which are single-sided with metallic floral designs. There are 4 sheets of each print in Rococo Rose, Blushing Bride and Sahara Sand. And they are all gorgeous!

The box is a simple, standard design, made in a size that fits the gift that I made. It’s 2-1/4″ x 7″ x 1″.  To make it, I used the Blushing Bride design with its Copper metallic accents.

The Belly Band is Next

There’s another element on this box you’ve not seen before, either. The Blushing Bride Metallic Ribbon is absolutely amazing. One side of the ribbon is a satin ribbon in the Blushing Bride color. The other is a weave of what looks like copper and some more Blushing Bride. While I love the colors, it does take some twisting and turning to make the bow have only one side of the ribbon showing off. But, hey, it’s fabric. It’s made to be manipulated!

To make the Belly Band around the box, I cut a 1″ strip of Copper Foil and then tied the ribbon around it. I placed some Mini Glue Dots under the ribbon at the bow and several placed around to the back of the Copper Foil. It slips off and onto the box beautifully.

And Finally the Gift Itself

My friend and her mother spend much of their spare time knitting gifts to be sent to shelters and other places that help those in need stay warm during the winter months. This year they sent out several boxes of hats and blankets and other items, even as far away as Alaska. And, while they did include a note in each box, none of the individual items had any tags. A tag can serve many purposes including the size of the item or even just a note saying, “Made with love.” We talked a bit about this last week and my friend thought a tag would be a good idea and I could see her brain working out the details of making tags in the future. So why shouldn’t I jump start the effort!?

I had already decided that I was going to use the retired 3D Embossing Folder, Winter Knit, to make Christmas cards for my friend and her mother. Why not use them to make tags!? And so I did.

Each of the tags is a 2″ square card. The embossing folder is 6″ square, so I was able to get seven 1-3/4″ squares for the tag front out of one embossed 6″ square piece of cardstock. I wanted the front of the tags with the star shape to have a full star, and there are only four full stars on one sheet. The striped pattern divided nicely into three pieces.

There are 10 each of Coastal Cabana, So Saffron and Calypso Coral tags. There’s a piece of white cardstock inside for writing a note. I punched a small hole in the corner of each using the side of the Label Me Fancy Punch that includes a small hole punch. That punch is strong as it went through 4 thicknesses of cardstock with no fuss!

The Bottom Line

The simple truth of this project is that I had a blast making it! I’ve developed the skills to design and put something like this together. And Stampin’ Up! papers and other products make it so very easy. The result if something that I’m proud to share with my friend – and with you!

Happy Stamping!

Robin Messenheimer



 

Before I Was a Paper Crafter!

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Aloha, all!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve named my place where I do my crafting, Robin’s Craft Room. I started out with Robin Stamps, but then I realized that I do other crafts than stamp to make cards, scrapbook pages and gifts. I also crochet and do other kinds of needlework when the mood strikes me. But back in the 1990s and into the early part of the 21st century, most of my crafting involved counted thread embroidery and quilting small objects such as ornaments.

As part of that season of my crafting, I made many Christmas ornaments, and received hand-stitched ornaments from many friends, especially my long-time friend, Janet, and members of an online group that dates back to the 1980s called “Women of the Cloth,” a group that started in a message board in the early days of AOL.

This is the first year that I’ve displayed almost all of my handmade ornaments, either on my tree (yes, an indoor tree!) or on the ornament tree that I used to display a selection of special ornaments when we didn’t have an indoor tree. The stitched/quilted ball ornament is one that I made in 1992. Janet made two of the central ornaments, and others were gifts by way of swaps with fellow stitchers.

Again, all of the ornaments in the front of this picture were made by Janet. I made several and others were from other friends. What’s really special to me is that many of the ornaments have the date they were made. Janet was very good at doing that, and I tried to emulate her effort to put things in their place in time.

And they’re all in fabulous shape! In those years, I moved from Virginia to New Mexico and then to Hawai’i. I’ve protected these ornaments so that they are as beautiful today as they were in the early 90s and up to the 2000s.

But now I’m all into paper crafting. Maybe I should consider making paper crafted ornaments for 2020! Ah, my first challenge of the year for myself. Check back here 12 months from now.

Whatever your ornaments are made of, enjoy them and have a wonderful holiday season!

Robin Messenheimer



Curvy Keepsake Table Favors!

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Aloha, all!

With everything else that’s been going on, I’ve been involved in getting ready for quite a few holiday parties sponsored by many organizations to which I belong. For the most part, given that we’ve been so focused on making our home livable, I’ve been able to beg out of doing too very much. But I jumped at the opportunity to make the table favors for one of the groups that was having a party at which up to 100 people would be attending. Why did I jump at this? Because I knew how easy it is to make darling little favor boxes with the Stampin’ Up! Mini Curvy Keepsake  Box!

While I hadn’t yet bought this die set when I volunteered for this job, I had read reviews from many who had already used it and said you could even cut more than one of these out at a time with a die-cutting machine that I already owned. I tried it, and it worked wonderfully! While it might not work this well with all machines, it did fine with mine. So before you try it on good paper, you might try it on some papers that aren’t your favorite before using up all your fun papers!

All that’s needed to make the box is a 6″ x 6″ square of Designer Series Paper. For this project, I ordered a pack of the Brightly Gleaming Specialty Designer Series Paper and one pack of the Wrapped in Plaid 6″ x 6″ Specialty Designer Series Paper. The “specialty” part for the Brightly Gleaming set is that it has copper accents on one side of each sheet, and for the Plaid paper the specialty part is lines of gold on one plaid side of each sheet. As we were going to be in a room with lights somewhat dimmed, I thought that the metallic elements in both the paper sets would gleam on the tables. And they did!

At first I was concerned about how the two different sets of papers would look together. But once I saw a box full of the treats, I realized that this was going to be a nice mix.In fact, one of the women who helped me put the boxes all together liked all of the designs so well that she occasionally used the “other” side of some of the papers. There’s a red piece with white dots peeking out at the bottom of this picture. She snuck that by me!!

Even though one set had copper elements and the other gold elements, I chose a gold braid from a local craft store to tie the boxes at the top. It worked out fine.

As to what you can put into this tiny box: We ordered some lovely small individually wrapped lilikoi cookies from a company called “Big Island Delights” here in Hilo, Hawai’i, and put one of those along with a green Andes Mint and a Red and Silver covered Hershey Candy Kiss in each box before closing it. Yes, all 3 of those fit inside these little boxes. They’re so big inside for such a tiny little package!

If you’ve got a party coming up, by all means, use this delightful die to make party favors!

Happy stamping – and partying!

Robin Messenheimer



 

Our Apartment Renovation is Finished!

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Aloha, all!

In mid-October, once again our life was interrupted by constant moving of furniture back and forth. While I tried to weather through all that was going on, by the beginning of November, I realized that I needed to focus on where we lived and keeping it livable than on my crafting. If you can believe it, I managed to go to a Stampin’ Up! event in mid-November without ANY swaps to speak of. I had committed to a shoebox swap with a small group of friends. But I had done plenty of tutorials over the year, and I found one that meant all I had to do was cut paper to prepare.

In the first part of this year’s renovation season, which I’ve mentioned in the past, we had contracted to have all of the windows in the apartment replaced. DONE!!! Then we had to get our handyman in to do the caulking and painting finish work. DONE!!! Once some spalling issues in our exterior walls were fixed, we were ready to have the rest of our under-window cupboards installed. DONE!!! Finally, just this past Friday, we had crown molding and a new door to one of our rooms installed, along with a few leftover odds and ends. Yay! It’s all DONE!!!

The first thing that I did was to put up a Christmas tree – we didn’t have one last year because we were still dealing with having had to move twice after the volcano destroyed our house. So Christmas was in our hearts only, and then barely there. But this year we have a tree!

AND, featured paper crafting project, I made a wreath for our front door. I made this using a pattern published last February by one of my favorite sister Stampin’ Up! demonstrators, Lyssa Zwolanek. She used soft, color-coordinated papers. I wanted red and green for Christmas, so out came the very Real Red and Garden Green, of the Toile Tidings Designer Series Paper set. Lyssa says in her blog post for this project that it can be made in 45 minutes. After cutting 4 sheets of paper into 4″ squares and folding the first ring, I thought, “No way am I going to get this done in 45 minutes!” But the rest of the rings were oh so easy! So, even after putting on the optional 4th layer, I got this done in under an hour.

After putting all the papers together using staples and Stampin’ Dimensionals, I added some of the red and green Toile Tidings Glitter Enamel Dots to the tips of papers all over the wreath. I finished it all off with a bow and hanger made with the Real Red 1/8″ Curly Ribbon that’s part of the Let It Snow suite of Stampin’ Up! holiday products.

The wreath now hangs with our apartment number beautifully centered by all the pretty paper!

This year, I’m ready for Christmas!

Happy stamping!

Robin Messenheimer



These, along with a stapler, are all the products I needed for this project. Click on any of the icons if you’d like to check any of them out. This goes right to my Stampin’ Up! store, so buying them from me is easy!

Treats Not Tricks, Paper Pumpkin Style!

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Aloha and Happy Halloween, all!

I’m among those who treat this day as a day for fun for kids and adults alike. We can dress up and do silly things just for the fun of it, and very few people have a problem with it. Of course, as a Stampin’ Up! “nut,” I try to make cards and treats that feature Stampin’ Up! products every year. This year was no exception.

Paper Pumpkin, the monthly kit from Stampin’ Up!, did a wonderful job of making it easy to put together all these fun treats this year. In fact, there were 20 treat boxes in this year’s Halloween kit, and there just happened to be 20 people at my husband’s duplicate bridge game (that would be 5 tables) on the Sunday before the big day. So off they went to the bridge players. One of them was over for dinner last night and she said the “Bone Appetit” greeting made her laugh. I’m sure it was because she’s spent a bunch of time in France and the accent was in the right place.

If you’ve not looked into Paper Pumpkin of late, now just might be the time to do it. I’ve been really impressed with the kits this year, and they seem to get better and better. If you’re on Facebook, you can subscribe to several Paper Pumpkin groups, most of which have lots of up-to-date information about what might be in the next kit every month. So if, for example, a kit with treat boxes wasn’t going to be of interest to you, you could have opted out of this month’s kit. If you have a subscription, it doesn’t affect the number of kits you’ll get. So there’s no loss if you skip a kit (except for the fun you’d have making it). And if you’re just buying them month-to-month, you just don’t get billed that month!

The kit I just got is a set of gorgeous Christmas cards. I haven’t made them yet because I want to wait to see what the November kit has in the way of stamp set and ink spot. The kit will be tags (doesn’t interest me) but I’ll bet a lot of the “stuff” in that kit will make those Christmas cards even better!

If you have any questions about Paper Pumpkin, let me know (e-mail or phone call works – just remember I’m in Hawaii, so there’s a time difference from the mainland US!) In each kit you get everything you need to make that kit’s projects – except a pair of scissors if there is ribbon or twine to cut. But who doesn’t have a pair of scissors somewhere around the house?! If you’re a new subscriber, you get a size D acrylic block in your first kit, so you’ll always have something on which to mount the photopolymer stamps that come with the kits.

Do try it out – and let me know what you think.

Happy stamping!

Robin Messenheimer