Welcome to the Handmade Holidays Blog Hop!!!

Calling all crafters! We've gathered designers from some of our favorite manufacturers to show you ways to create something from the heart this holiday season. This 3-day Hop includes over 60 stops with inspiration brimming from every corner. Explore all thoughtful and frugal handmade gifts you could make for the holidays, all in one place on this Hop!

To sweeten to Hop, we re offering a gift for you! For every comment you leave on the blogs in the Hop, you ll be entered to win a prize pack from one of the participating manufacturer sponsors!

I am representing Graphic 45 during this hop! Graphic 45 will be giving away the beautiful Christmas Emporium collection along with a 5x8 Altered Art Box, an Altered Art Metal Tin, and a Metal Ornate Metal Door Plate. A more than $60 value!

To show you what you can make with some of these products, I've made a fancy gift card holder! This altered envelope can be used to hold a gift card, small treats, become a package decoration, or even be used as wall art!

I do not make "quick and easy" gift projects. Even if I start out to do so, as I did here, they end up looking like...well, like this! (For a complete supply list, see the end of the post.)

This project is NOT as time consuming as it looks, and I do make use of packaging and other odds and ends!

Start out with one of the pages of a Graphic 45 Kraft Envelope Album and two tags from Graphic 45 packaging. I used the packaging from the metal flowers.

Cover the envelope and both tags with Graphic 45 papers and ink all edges. Now you have the base for your project.

Once your envelope and tags are covered with paper, you can decorate a little, or a lot. One of the tags can be glued to the front of the envelope as a decoration, as I did. And the second tag can be slipped inside the envelope to hold a gift card.

Since I love lumpy decorations, and I like to make my gift card holders EXTRA special, I added a lot of this and that to my project! To create the left side, I first painted an Ornate Metal Door Plate and several Metal Flower Staples with white acrylic paint.

I used pliers to bend my flowers into shape and glued the petals together. Tara Orr has a wonderful tutorial HERE for showing one way to do this. Mine are slightly different, but you get the idea. I always paint my flowers first, then dab them with chalk ink for added dimension.

Once I attached the metal door plate and flower, I added a crystal branch decoration and some velvet mistletoe and some berries. Very festive!

I wanted to make sure to have a Christmas message, so I stamped a sentiment with the Graphic 45/Hampton Art stamps, then used Spellbinders Labels Eighteen to cut out the image.

I like to stencil my images with chalk ink to give them more interest. I used French Blue chalk ink. It matches the Graphic 45 papers almost exactly!

I punched out a Santa image and glued it to a bottle cap - one of my "signature" embellishments! I made a second bottle cap for the top of my gift card tag, making the tag easier to pull out of the envelope.

I don't think I'll be making 100 of these decorated envelopes, but I can make a few for my most special people, and I can use all my extra packaging tags to make simple gift tags as well. I save ALL of my interesting packing for just this purpose.

Now...

Visit the list of blogs below and leave a comment on each by Nov 7, 2011, at 11:59 PM PST. Each day we will be sharing a brand new list of blogs with brand new projects for you to explore, be inspired by, and create from! For a complete list, visit the Graphic 45 Blog!

Company Blogs:
Clearsnap
Spellbinders 
Hampton Art 
Zutter
Graphic 45
Donna Salazar Designs
The Twinery
Authentique Paper
Glue Arts

Designer Blogs for November 5th:
Jan Hennings (Glue Arts)
Kim Sonksen (Donna Salazar Designs)
Jamie Harper (Hampton Art)
Jenny Suchin (The Twinery)
Heather Conklin (Authentique Paper) 
Gloria Stengel (Graphic 45)  -  YOU ARE HERE!
Christine Emberson (Spellbinders)
Julie Overby (Spellbinders)
Mary Dawn Quirindongo (Clearsnap)
Lea Sanders (Zutter)
Tara Orr (Graphic 45)
Patti Milazzo (Glue Arts) 
Emily Lanham (Authentique Paper)
Jessy Christopher (Donna Salazar Designs)

Supplies:
Graphic 45 Papers:
Christmas Past: The Night Before Christmas
Christmas Emporium: Believe!, Santa Express, Special Delivery
Graphic 45 and Hampton Art Stamps: Christmas Emporium
Graphic 45 Staples: Kraft Envelope Album, Ornate Metal Doorplate, Metal Flowers, Trim
Graphic 45 tag packaging

Clearsnap: Dark Brown, Creamy Brown, Chestnut Roan, French Blue Fluid Chalk Ink; Dark Cashmere Decades Antiquing Ink
Spellbinders: Labels Eighteen
Glue Arts: 3D foam squares, Raisen's adhesive squares, Glue Glider Pro
Deco Art: White acrylic paint
Prima: Decorative Border Cinderella Collection Cypress vine, Antique Mistletoe Traditional flowers
May Arts: twine, ribbon
Stampin' Up! Circle punch
Provo Craft: tiny scallop scissors
Fiskars: pinking scissors
Craft supply: Bottle cap, brads, glue