Crafty Creatives Christmas Box

Recently I've had an awful chest infection which seems to have gone on forever, but I got something lovely in the post last week....the Crafty Creatives Christmas Box! I'd ordered this back in September for £20 plus p&p - although I stopped my Crafty Creatives subscription this was a one off box and I thought I'd treat myself as I love Christmas crafting.

The box arrived Wednesday morning while I waited for my oven to be installed (after 6 weeks without an oven) and was so excited when my Mum brought in my post (she came round to help when the oven was delivered). The box came in a red bag instead of the normal pink bag and was packed with goodies - so much so that you couldn't get it back in the box to shut it properly!

Here is a Vine or the unpacking (I hope this works ok, I've never tried adding these before):

The box included:
Wooden snowflakes
Tree shaped beads
Christmas cameo
Stix2 Wrapping Seals (see my post http://www.saraleighuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/christmas-wrapping-and-using-some-bits.html for a review of these)
Three cardboard cones which fitted together like a Christmas tree (like the Decopatch models)
Christmas tree stickers
Christmas papers
Card blanks and envelopes
Mini coloured bells
2 gift boxes to cut and assemble (assembled below

The contents of the box also included three kits. I don't usually like the kits but these looked quite good including lip scrub (with 5 little tubs), a felt decoration and a beaded bauble.

I've not made the lip scrub yet but ended up using the items from the felt decoration and beaded bauble kits in other ways. I used the felt from the felt decoration kit, along with the two small wreath rings to make wreaths to go round the bottom of candles. I'm a bit addicted to die cutting small flowers out of felt to decorate things with at the moment so I covered the wreaths with wool (wrapping it round) and then layered the ring up with felt flowers and adding some glitter. I used the felt from the kit as well as some of my own. I then did the same to the Christmas tree/cardboard cones.

With the bauble I put the beads in my stash and decorated the bauble with some glittered snowflake stickers (our Christmas tree is black with black, white and silver decorations so decorated it in this way so it stays in keeping with our theme).

With the Christmas tree beads I coloured them with my Spectrum Noir pens to make them red and deep purple to stick with my wrapping theme and then glittered them up. I've used them on some of my Christmas tags and will be using them on Christmas crackers too

Christmas Wrapping - and using some bits from #ccchristmas

I decided how I was going to wrap my Christmas presents for this Christmas in Decrmber last year while finishing off the Disney Princess Christmas paper (it took nearly three years to finish off the Disney rolls I'd brought from Costco....hubby didn't seem that impressed when I arrived home with them...). So this year I was going to wrap all my presents in parcel paper, add stamps and ribbon but after wrapping one I found the tape didn't want to stick (unless I used lots of it) so I did a few parcels this way and sent Lee to pick up some nice paper from Aldi (by nice I mean modern and not too colourful) and he came back with two lovely rolls. I also had to wrap my sisters huge parcel so normal wrapping paper was much easier. I added curling ribbon and some handmade tags. On some I used the tree beads from Crafty Creatives Christmas Box and on others used Christmas stamps from Creative Stamping magazine (I've never brought this magazine but loved the stamps).

I also tried out the Stix2 wrapping seals that came with the Crafty Creatives Christmas box. These are adhesive discs to use instead of tape. They are really easy to use and having tried them on numerous shapes and sizes of presents I found they work best on small to medium sized parcels and ones which are square and firm as you need to press them on to ensure they give a firm seal. On larger presents and odd shaped ones I went back to using tape but these do definitely speed up wrapping 

The only downside to these is that the sheets are clear (as well as the seals) so if you put them down its a bit of a challenge to find them (I had four sheets on the go at one point). Also it's hard to see if you've used a sheet up, you have to feel for them or try to catch the light on them to see if there are any left. 

I wouldn't go out of my way to buy these but they were a nice addition in the Crafty Creatives Christmas Box.