Happy Easter Bunny Milk Cartons

It’s that time of the year! That time when Spring arrives and all the shelves in every store are full of chocolate bunnies and pretty chocolate eggs. That time when we eat too many and then swear never to eat chocolate again.

As I’m something of an enabler when it comes to spoiling ones-self and others; and in order to aid with your chocolate consumption and gifting this year, I’ve made up a pretty little Easter bunny milk carton template that you can customise with the names of both the gifter and giftee… or you could just fill in your name in both spaces.

It’s quite simple and subtle, so it will allow your gorgeous gift inside to take centre stage.

To customise it, just open in Adobe Acrobat or Reader, fill in the fields in the form and print it off.

Or simply print it off if you want them left blank.

The finished box is 9cm wide x 9cm deep x 13 cm high

It’s as simple as printing it out on A3 card stock, cutting it out, scoring along the dotted lines and folding.

Update: I’ve had a question about ‘card stock’. Sorry, I should have been clearer. Just print it out on the thickest card you can get through your printer. Anything about 160 gsm should work well.

Then use double-sided tape or paper glue to stick it together and you’ll have a super cute little box in a jiffy.

In the interest of full disclosure, the inspiration for this little design came from one of my favourite outfits for Munchkin. We bought it in Australia. It’s this beautiful little jumpsuit by Oeuf NYC. I love it so much I’ve plans to buy it in more colours and larger sizes so that she can wear them for as long as possible.

My templates and tutorials are free for personal use only

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next to nicx
April 3, 2014
Craft, Custom, Design, DIY, Easter, Holidays, Packaging, Tutorial
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Collection of free Valentines Printables

Valentines Day is fast approaching. Are you prepared?

For those of you who aren’t, I’ve collated a collection of free Valentines Day printables. So if you’re stuck for ideas, why not have a look? Just click on the images to link through to the respective blogs and downloadable files.

My husband and I are a bit rubbish at Valentines Day. It’s often forgotten until the day before or the morning of.

We avoid all the really commercial aspects of the day and don’t go out to crazily expensive and often mediocre dinners or buy each-other expensive gifts. But we do something. This year my husband will have just gotten off the plane after an 11 hour flight followed by a 2 1/2 hour train trip, having spent just 3 days in San Francisco. So we’re going for low key this year. I’m going to make us a nutritious and delicious dinner and then, if my lovely other half can keep his eyes open, we’ll watch a movie.

Usually I make a card. But last year I forgot about Valentines Day all-together as I was suffering from a hideous bout of morning sickness. I have no idea what I’m going to do this year. Some people appear to be using my Little Mr Robot Advent Calendar as a Valentines Gift, so I may do something similar.

A little robot advent

It’s coming round to that time of year wherein I look at the calendar and panic. I’ve not even started to think about Christmas presents for friends and family, let alone creating an advent calendar. And this year is particularly difficult as I’m trying to do it all whilst sleep deprived and often with a Munchkin who won’t let me put her down. So this year, I’m remaking some of the advents I created last year and thought you might want to do so too.

So here’s a slightly revised Little Mr Robot advent blog post:

A friend of mine dropped into conversation that she thought that I sketch I’d done years ago would look rather cute as an advent calendar. So I spent a little time this week playing with it to see if I could get it to work. Et voilà!! Here is the result!

If you live in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Peru, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium or Brazil (along with a host of other countries) it’s coming up to Mothers Day. Stumped as to a gift idea? Why not make or bake your mum something sweet and nestle it in a cute hexagon gift box?

I’ve had a bit of fun messing around with watercolour splodges and have come up with a couple of templates for you to download and make up. Or you can download the blank template and decorate as you wish!

For this project you’ll need:
Adhesive or double-sided tape
The thickest A4 card stock you can put through your printer (mine takes 200gsm, but check your printer for details)
Scissors, scalpel or exacto knife
Some decorative ribbon (I’ve marked cutouts to allow for 10mm wide ribbon)
Some paints, crayons, pencils or other decorative materials (if working with the blank template)

The templates make up 2 sized boxes 72mm wide in diameter (point to point) x 60mm high
and 90mm wide in diameter (point to point) x 43mm high

You could easily scale them up and print on A3 card if you required them to be larger.

For the ones above I did some quick watercolour scribbles and added handwritten notes in white pencil (white charcoal pencil to be exact). But the sky is the limit. You could bedazzle, embroider, paint, draw… whatever you’d like! This would be rather a lovely project to work on with a small child as you could cut it out and they could decorate the box as they wish and with a little help from you, assemble it.

Print and cut out your desired template. I cut my templates out using my Graphtec cutter/ plotter but it’s not a difficult template to cut out by hand.

If you’ve printed out the plain template, now is the time to get scribbling and decorating to your hearts content!

Fold along each of the dotted lines and glue the edge tab to the underside of the opposing panel to create the hexagonal shape.

If you need a ‘base’ in your gift box for heavier gifts, glue one set of the top tabs and gift box lids together for extra support as shown (I used strong double-sided tape).

To attach the ribbon, glue the ribbon to the underside of the tab shown and thread through the ribbon slot as shown.

Then thread through the corresponding ribbon slot in the lid, pulling though and aligning the lid and tabs. Repeat on both sides and tie into a pretty bow.

And there you have it. Pretty hexagonal gift boxes ready for your gift!

Download the 72 x 60 patterned gift box here (67mb)

Download the 72 x 60 plain gift box here (67mb)

Download the 90 x 43 patterned gift box here (112mb)

Download the 90 x 43 plain gift box here (112mb)

Apologies for the large size files and so slow load times. I am still trying to find a way to reduce them further.

My templates and tutorials are free for personal use only.

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next to nicx
May 6, 2013
Craft, Design, DIY, Holidays, Packaging, Paper art, Tutorial
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Easter Eggs

Due to illness and lethargy, I’ve not made any eggs this year. But for the many of you who have found next to nicx over the last few months, I thought I’d share some of the eggs I made last year.

They were very easy.

I made stencils out of sticky backed plastic on my plotter cutter (but you could easily use store bought stickers).
I then carefully applied them to the blown and cleaned eggs.
Painting the eggs and over the stencils with matt acrylic paint.
When the paint had dried, I run a scalpel along the edges of the stencil to make sure the edges were nice and clean.
Very carefully removing the stencil and then cleaning up some of the messier lines with a scalpel (you can etch into the egg slightly).
I then ran ribbon and a bead through the holes in the top and bottom of the blown eggs for hanging.

I was really happy with how they turned out.

Here’s the Star Wars egg I made for my husband. I hope eventually to have made him an army

I hope you’re all having a wonderful Easter weekend!

Nicx

Origami Easter Bunny Basket

It’s been a tough couple of months. Pregnancy for me has been a bit of a trial. It’s meant that I’ve been unable to do much more than vegetate on the couch. There is now a Nicola shaped impression permanently pressed into the couch cushions. But I’ve just ticked over to 14 weeks and the nausea and chronic illness have started to abate. I’m now able to eat small meals and my energy levels have slowly increased. The munchkin is in good health and according to the ultrasounds he/she is having a fabulous time doing somersaults and jazz hands, not affected by my lethargy at all! All of which have made me happy.

But something that truly made my day on Tuesday was opening my post box parcel shelf to discover this gorgeous little Easter gift! My friend Sandra had made my husband and I an origami easter bunny basket and filled it with delicious little chocolate Easter eggs! It was such a sweet little gift to leave and positively made my day!

I did a bit of googling and found a fabulous video tutorial that shows you how to make them, so you can have a go at making them too. It’s the wonderful work of Leyla Torres. Enjoy!

A cheesy NYE

How was your New Years? Our was rather quiet as seems to be the norm in Switzerland. There are no big fireworks displays or outdoor festivals in Switzerland to celebrate the arrival of a new year.

Most years we’ve been in Switzerland we’ve had a quiet night in and have opened a bottle of champagne to toast the new year in. But we decided to do something a little different this year. We had a few of our friends around for dinner and games. Read more

Gluten free gingerbread

I hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas? Mine was fabulous and included a decadent seafood lunch at La Brasserie du Grand Chêne, more champagne and dessert with gorgeous friends, followed by an early night. All that eating and socialising is exhausting! Our planned morning Skype call with our family in Australia was postponed by a day due to a boomerang accident on the beach that resulted in a brief hospital visit (seriously… can you get any more stereotypically Australian?!). Note: both the boomerang and the person it hit are ok.

Whilst we were a little sad not to be spending this Christmas in Australia surrounded by family, it’s been lovely to spend some time at home and we’re feeling wonderfully relaxed. We head back to Australia every two years for Christmas and have commenced counting down to next years!

I was spoiled unbelievably by Santa aka DM who gifted me with a new Celine wallet and a medium Wacom Intuos 5 tablet. I played Santa to DM and provided him with a new dressing gown as well as a Google Nexus 7 tablet and a matching Hard Graft Tab iPad Mini Case (it also fits the Nexus 7). So it was rather a luxurious and gadgety Christmas! Was Santa nice to you?

In the days leading up to Christmas I had an insatiable desire to make the house smell Christmassy and decided we needed Gingerbread! But I’d never made gluten free gingerbread before. Sasha (aka Liberty London Girl) had posted her recipe for Gingerbread tree decorations and I decided to adapt it so it was gluten free and used ingredients I had on hand and am able to get a hold of in Switzerland. I also increased the quantity so it made 150% of the original recipe. This would give you enough dough to make a good sized Gingerbread house if you wanted to make one (I ran out of time to make one this time).

The cookies came out fabulously, just the right combination of crunchy and a little soft in the middle. With the result that the batch I made is diminishing rapidly. Here’s my adjusted recipe.

Ingredients

115g Muscovado sugar (brown sugar being near impossible to get hold of in Switzerland)
3 tablespoons of golden syrup (with copious thanks to Meriel who provided me some from her stash)
1 1/2 tablespoons of honey (I didn’t have access to molasses or treacle)
1 1/2 tablespoon water
145 grams of butter cubed
1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
grated rind from 1 lemon
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
335 grams of sifted gluten free flour of your choice
3 grams of guar gum

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.

In a large saucepan combine the sugar, zest, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, water, honey and golden syrup. Over a medium / high heat, bring the mixture to the boil.

When boiling remove from the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda and cubed butter, stirring until well combined.

Add the combined flour and guar gum in 4 batches, stirring well after each addition. It should come together into a dough at this point, but it will still be very soft.

Wrap it in cling wrap and refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour.

Roll out the dough on baking paper using a lightly floured rolling pin to about 5 mm thick. And using your cutters, cut into desired shapes. Place onto a baking paper lined baking sheet. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

Allow to cool on a baking rack.

Glitter Bow Wrapping

Christmas is almost upon us! Are you ready for it?

I wrapped the last of my presents today. And thought I’d show you one of my favourites. It’s quick and easy and allows you to really spruce up a present with nothing more than glue, a sharpie and some glitter. It’s perfect for those last minute gifts if you’ve been caught out without wrapping or ribbon. Read more

Free Christmas Printable Gift Tags

It’s that most wonderful time of the year…. The time when you feel like you’re running late (and you are) for about 3 weeks straight. You’re prepping for guests or for travel, hiding Christmas presents from loved ones (and trying to remember where you hid them later), making fruit cake and trying not to consume the alcohol for the cake… before it gets into the cake. And in amongst the chaos that is the festive season, you need to wrap presents!

And if most of the people I’ve discussed this with are anything to go by, you get to the night before the big day in question and the stash of wrap you grabbed as you raced out of the store but didn’t really look at properly taunts you. And you make do. Or you get to the gift wrap section and anything that is half decent is gone. All that’s left is the paper covered in gaudy glitter. The wrapping paper equivalent of a Christmas sweater featuring Rudolph with blinking nose. The one that doesn’t fall into the so bad it’s good category. It’s just bad.

So I’m here to help. I’ve come across so many gorgeous printables that you can use quickly and easily and I want to share them with you. They’ll enable you to present perfectly polished presents! So go grab a roll of brown paper, some bakers twine and your tape. Print and cut these out and you’ll be set!

These are some of my favourite this year! By Kelli Murray Art and Design.
Click on the images to link through to the respective printable post.

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