Any time I see happy Christmas colors–beyond the typical red, green, gold and silver–my mind wanders to my grandparent’s Christmas tree with its string of big bulbs and bubble lights and sweet bright colored ornaments. And tinsel. Oh how I miss those days.

So when I see something like this from Miss Melissa, I get all nostalgic-like. It’s not what’s considered ‘traditional’, but it sure makes it all a happy Christmas. These little gift-ables are just ever-so lovely! And just think if you got all these put together now? What a time saver that would be!

Here’s Melissa to tell you all about how these little colorful gems came together.

 

 

My jumping off point for this months project all started with the super cute ‘Merry + Bright’ stamp from the Looks Like Christmas stamp set. I knew I wanted to use that stamp right away. My first thought was a simple tag. I made the tag and I love the way it looks with the bright pink, glittered reinforcement tab.

Then searching through Kerri’s awesome assortment of Boxes + Bags, I came across the cute star Pillow Box. I thought it would be super cute paired together with the tag. The original file is a cut and print but I had a different idea in mind. So I turned the original file into a plain cut file using the ‘trace and cut’ feature in my Silhouette Studio software. I cut the box out of plain white card stock. In keeping with the merry + bright idea I backed each of the tiny stars with brightly colored, sugary, glitter paper. I attached the tag with some silver cord and I really loved how quick, and cute this first project turned out and I kept going and going and going! 

 

 

For my second project, I stamped and created my own wrapping paper. For the snowflake wrapping paper, I simply stamped the snowflakes (three different sizes) from the Looks Like Christmas stamp set all over the white craft wrapping paper that I found at my local craft store. I usually create my own wrapping paper for smaller gifts but I’m sure with just a few more minutes it can be done with any size gift. Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect. For the tag, I used the Basically Christmas stamp set and stamped a couple of sentiments on the tag along with a few of those adorable houses and tree. I added  a couple jingle bells and some silver cord to tie it all together. 

 

 

The black and white striped, store bought, wrapping paper is the perfect backdrop for all the embellishing I did to this project. I love how the bright pink pops off the wrapping paper. I wrapped the already wrapped gift with silver cord. Then I started to add all the other embellishments over the cord.  I cut a bow out of bright pink paper, added those leaf sprigs, which I stamped on a piece of scrap paper and fussy cut, and a tag. The leaf sprigs and the ‘Good Tidings of Comfort and Joy’ sentiment are from the Peace on Earth stamp set. I embossed every embellishment on this project. 

 

 

My last project for this set was a tag, ready to be attached to any Christmas gift. This tag is stamped with the ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ sentiment from the Looks Like Christmas stamp set and ‘Spread the Cheer’ from the Wonderland stamp set. I also stamped the tag reinforcement with a tiny star from the Peace On Earth stamp set. I added a few glitter tags in the bright colors to give  this tag just a bit more color. I really love the bright colors of all these projects I created. 

 

 

A tip, that was helpful for me, for creating a bunch of tags all at once is to cut a batch of the tags (and reinforcement pieces) all at once in different sizes using the Office Tag cut file. This way, I had a tag already handy whenever I needed one and didn’t have to go back and forth to my cutting software to cut a single tag. I cut some of the reinforcement in colored paper but most of them, I cut in white and I stamped them with small shaped stamps to add interest and another pop of color to the tags. 

I love that with a few stamps I was able create custom tags, gift wrap and boxes for Christmas gift giving. I’m all about simple so I kept each of these pieces I created simple AND Merry and Bright.  As always, friends, I hope I’ve inspired you to create something fun and special.