I happened onto Mary Jo's tutorial to make holiday-themed favor tins through the SUDSOL website. Oh my, the little mini-tins she turned into magnets are so adorable. I had to give it a go. This was my first stab at it using Stampin' Up! Cutie Pie designer paper and Holiday Tag Team stamp set.
Mary Jo's tutorial is incredibly easy to follow. You'll find it here. Do be sure to pop over to her web site, Techno Stamper. You'll find lots of fun and hip-chick ideas.
The little mini tins are made by Wilson's and usually in the bridal section of Michaels. They come 30 to a box for about $15.00. I really liked the idea of paper piecing the scarf and hat. I confess, I haven't done that much, and it's so easy. You just stamp the image on white and again on designer paper. Well, check out Mary Jo's blog, she explains it better. Anyway, with my first attempt, the pattern in the paper was too large to really show up on the snowman. And, I thought I'd be a smarty and try stamping "let it snow" with white Staz-on ink onto the cover, but it didn't really work all that well (can you see it?). So, I made a few more using the Polka Dot and Paisley paper.
Even though I like Cutie Pie, this turned out much better. The only other change I made to Mary Jo's already fabulous design was to use Old Olive for shading instead of Going Gray. Whenever I use Going Gray for shading it looks dirty to me. I think I'm just not doing it right. I added a little glitter and used micro beads for the snow - 'cause that's what I had on hand. Well, with my design to my liking, I made a few more - 12 more in fact.
Oh, and one more little tip. Since these little tins are pretty deep (7/8 inches), I really wanted the snowman to pop out. Poppin' Dimensionals would have done the trick, but I wanted it to stick out more. So . . . I used the scraps from trimming my stamp sets. Did you know that if you remove the orange rubber and paper protection from your gray cushion, you have two sided tape similar to mounting tape? It's probably not archival safe, but works perfectly for this project. In fact, I used three layers of what we'll call "rubber tape."
So, what am I going to do with 13 of these cuties? Well, I promised my Hostess club members a little something when they share some of their projects. They are amazing crafters, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they bring.
Thank you Mary Jo for all the inspriration and instruction. I really had fun making these.