Popping in briefly

Good heavens, I can't believe it's been nearly a week since I've posted. I have been crazily making as much stuff as I can for the fair at Ben's school next week. I have vowed that this year, I will not stay up until midnight making snowman soup and such things that people will buy but is just not enjoyable for me to churn out. So I'm having a blast and making things that I really love. Hopefully after this fair is over I'll actually have time to show them to you.

I thought I would quickly post a fun little project I did last week. One of my tasks for the fair is to come up with a donation for the raffle. I'm going to do a gift basket with a variety of stuff in it (not all of which I'm 100% sure of, LOL). This is one of the items.

I'd found these cute tins of cocoa and spiced cider mixes at HomeGoods a couple weeks ago. (If you are not lucky enough to live near a HomeGoods store, TJMaxx has a lot of the same stuff.) I didn't want to cover up the cute print on the outside, so I just used sticky strip to adhere some wide chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon and added a bow. The tag uses a snowflake background from A Muse and a sentiment from Hero Arts with my SU tag punches, and I tied it on with a bit of hemp twine. The colors are old olive and chocolate chip.

The top of the tin is probably my favorite part. This snowman from Inkadinkado is the perfect size. I colored him in with an old olive marker and some Tombow markers - I was trying really hard to match the colors on the tin. It's a sickness, I know.

I cut and embossed the circles with Nestabilities - I am so excited that I finally figured out the embossing sandwich that works in my Big Shot. If you're curious, this is what works for me:

1. Open the platform to tab 1 and place a cutting plate on top.
2. Put the die face up and the item to be embossed face down.
3. Cover with two Spellbinders tan embossing mats.
4. Cover with another cutting plate - I use a clean Cuttlebug B plate.
5. Put through the Big Shot without closing the top of the platform.

I hope that helps someone - I've definitely found that some experimentation is needed to figure out what works in your particular machine.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to take this week off from the inspiration challenge, but I expect to be back next week. I know y'all will understand!