This little guy was super quick and easy. The hardest part was finding a cartridge with the right shape triangle. I finally settled on using the Christmas Cheer cartridge (page 91) Christmas tree. I used the shadow cut with the shift key pressed, cut at 5 1/4" in red cardstock. Then I used my Plantin' Schoolbook cartridge for the rest of his features. His face is a circle cut at 2", his nose is a circle cut at 1/2". I also used the circle cut for his beard (2 1/4" in white cardstock). You need to trim this circle a little to make it straight where it attaches to the face piece. One more circle from black cardstock cut at 1" for his shoes (then cut it in half). The "fur" trim is cut from white cardstock using the rectangle cut from Plantin' Schoolbook. The hat trim is the rectangle cut at 2 1/2" with the italic key on. For the trim at the bottom I again used the italic key and cut at 4 1/4". I found this was a little too wide for the bottom trim so I cut the rectangle in half.
Then it was time to assemble. I'm going to help you out so you can learn from my mistake. I wanted to use Fun Flock on the white "fur" trim pieces and beard. Before you flock, decide where you want your shoes to go and put the adhesive down first. I used foam dots, but
do not remove the covering from the side facing up. If you don't do this, you can't get your shoes to stick to the Fun Flock. I wanted my shoes to sparkle so I covered them with MS glitter in Onyx. You'll want to do this before you attach them to the bottom flocked piece. Otherwise, you'll end up with black glitter in the fur trim. Just so you know I didn't screw up on both of these steps. Just the first one, trying to get my shoes to stick on top of the Fun Flock. The first piece I attached to the red "body" was the face, then the beard. I used a flesh colored copic to go around the edge of the nose and popped it with foam. Then I added the "fur" trim pieces. To finish Santa off I added two black rhinestones for his eyes and a white pom pom at the tip of his hat. My three year old granddaughter, Payton, will be coming over on Sunday and I will make a couple of these with her, one for her and one for baby sister, Paige (3 mths.). Payton loves to craft with Nana. (Mostly, she just likes to play with all my embellishments). We're also going to make an ornament for her Mommy and Daddy. My daughter, Jill, (Aunt "Jilly" to Payton and Aunt and Godmother to Paige) will be coming for a visit from N. Carolina. I figure between the two of us we should be able to get the ornaments made even while tending to Paige. My daughter Heidi is dropping them both off while she goes to work. While I'm talking about Paige I would really appreciate any prayers you all could offer up for her. She was born a little premature after Heidi was in a car accident. It seems she has all kinds of health problems. Last week she had to have tests done on her kidneys and is going to have to have surgery to fix a problem there. While doing that test they found that her liver and spleen didn't look right so she will be going back to the hospital this Thursday for scans of the liver and spleen. She is just so tiny and helpless, weighing barely ten pounds now at three months old. It's hard to know she is in pain. We don't know yet when surgery will be.
I made this set of gift bows with matching tags for my very special Aunt. Every summer I travel to her house for a week of scrapping, Cricuting, and craft supply shopping. We have the best time together and always share great ideas for fabulous creations. Going to her house is like going to a great rubber stamp store. She used to own a craft shop and has boxes and boxes of rubber stamps. Anyway, I knew she would really enjoy this. The set has four bows and tags and stores in an empty computer disc container. My husband had put some in our recycling bin and I took them out because I knew I could find something to do with them. This week's challenge at Three Clovers was for a gift item and Saturday challenge this week is for a matching set. I think this gift set qualifies for both challenges.
Each bow uses a 7" x 12" piece of paper. The bows look best if you make them with double-sided cardstock. I've made so many Christmas cards this year my supply of double-sided Christmas paper has dwindled to almost nothing. So I used light colored papers so the white side wouldn't look too bad. To make each bow you cut your 7" wide paper into seven 1" strips. Then you trim them to get four 6" pcs., four 5 1/2" pcs. and four 5" pieces. The last strip is used for the center of the bow and you need a 4" pc. for that. The tags were cut from the Joys of the Season cartridge's tag feature. I cut them at 4" then decorated with leftover scraps from the bows. Below is a picture of the decorated top of the container. The scalloped circle is cut from Cricut's Mini Monogram cartridge. I put a print paper circle on top of it then added a circle of white with my sentiment which came from The Cutting Cafe's (http://www.thecuttingcafe.typepad.com/) Christmas Inside Greetings set. The holly came from the Winter Woodland cartridge. I used 3-D Glaze pens from Sakura to doodle the edge of the sentiment circle, the holly and the edges of the tags. I embellished the container with a simple red checked bow. 
