My two elf mummy friends and I have been planning again. An acquaintance of ours recently found out she has cancer, so Nancy (one of the aforementioned friends) bought a bunch of flowers and left them on her front porch, with a note from the elves wishing her well.

Bec and I thought that was a lovely thing to do, so we've decided that, from now on, instead of getting Christmas presents for each other, we will do something for someone in our town who needs a little extra Christmas cheer, or who deserves to get some recognition. It will be a 'secret elf' gift, left on the persons doorstep - our version of a secret Santa.

For my 'SE' gift, I made these boxes which will be filled with all those chocolates. The large one is going to our local Blue Nurses charity shop for all the wonderful volunteers there to share.

I'm so happy we've decided to do this, helping cheer others up, especially at this time of year, makes me feel good.

Christmas treats for the ladies in my weekly social group - 50 of them. I had 25 left over from the Return to Happy Days event, so just made up another 25.

My sisters birthday card. I had already coloured in the pics so, even though it's 8" x 10", it didn't take long. I used the gorgeous new papers from Kaszazz as the background. I wanted the front left very plain, to feature the dolphins.

I've been busy with 3 projects this past week. First was assembling 50 small boxes for the Happy Days night I'm helping to organize. They each have a little 'record' greeting on the front.

These are the thank you's to everyone who attends. I had already cut and scored 50 of each style, so I assembled 25 of each, and will do more later, depending on ticket sales.

The next projects are for the Kaszazz consultant team day next month. There is always a challenge that we can do if we want to, with some nice prizes up for grabs. The criteria is to use at least 1 product from the new Christmas range. I made this mini tag album first.

Then I changed my mind and made this triple layer gift box instead. 

Some simple little mini albums I made from envelopes. I'm part of the organizing committee for my towns annual festival. In addition to the all day festival, we have night time entertainment as well. In the past it's been 'Table for Ten', where 10 people book a table, dress up in crazy costumes and have a night of music, roaming entertainment and fun.

Last year myself and 3 friends got roped into organizing the night event - with only 2 months notice. We pulled it off (very successfully if I do say so myself), so we were automatically nominated to do it again this year. We also have the day time "Eat Street" to do as well. For your viewing pleasure (amusement), here is a publicity shop from the Ipswich newspaper prior to the event. The clown is our local councilor!!

So I decided to make a little gift for the other 3 ladies - the mini albums for photos and other memorabilia from the event. The smaller one in the middle is for another lady who isn't on the committee, but has been helping us paint the scenery.

While these are simple in design, they took quite a while to make because of all the cutting. But I think it was worth it. One of these days, I'm going to have a go at making a really full on mini album.

An easy and relatively quick card I made this afternoon for a friends birthday.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out - my Aussie shack bird house. The Kaszazz papers suit it perfectly. It's a gift box - the roof opens out for the present to go inside. 

I made this vase card for my mum's birthday. Not my idea, but I modified the original to suit what I wanted. 

This years Easter packaging. I got the paper from Stampin Up, the lovely bright colours and small designs are exactly what I wanted for these. The flower s were made using a die, also from S.U, the letter stamps are also S.U. Naughty me, the only Kaszazz in this lot are the mini milk cartons. I love all these bags and boxes - so did the recipients.

The tiny wrapped eggs were my giveaways, the little Easter bunnies were for the ladies in my weekly social group. I had fin making this lot, and had started a couple of months ago, so it wasn't a big rush at the last minute.

A card I made today - I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. Not your typical sympathy card, but I'm not a fan of those mass produced, shop bought cards with the soppy verses in them, they're so impersonal. The stamp is not Kaszazz, but everything else is. I coloured the white ribbon with my art marker to match the cardstock. 

It's way early I know, but I had to make these cute little boxes for my 2 of my girl friends. We do lunches together to celebrate most things - birthdays, Easter, Christmas - or for no reason at all. These are their little Easter treats for this year.

I made mini milk cartons, stamped them with a gorgeous flourish from Kaszazz, and punched the scallop on each side.

These are this years treats for the businesses in town, which I do every year. There's 100 of them, with more ready to finish off if needed. I just embossed the cardstock, them edged each one with my Kaszazz markers.

It was a bit of a mission, but I did 55 of these little cuties for the ladies at my weekly social group. I know Easter is still 2 months away, but why wait until the last minute. A mini choc egg will be stuck to the back.

Now to make a variation of them as my local giveaway to the businesses in town.

Matchbooks I made for the ladies at my weekly social group. As we are in the worst heat wave in a hundred years at the moment, I couldn't use chocolate, so I went with individually wrapped mints.

I used a heart template on some, stamps on others and drew with gel pens on the rest.

I whipped up this little box this morning. I pulled apart a popper box and got the pattern - nice and easy. The only changes I made was to have the join at the side instead of down the back. I tried it that way first, but it made the box too flimsy.

I also shortened it slightly from 6 1/4" to 6", so I could get 2 from a sheet of cardstock.

I'm sure it's already been done copious times already, but I've never seen it before, and as I changed it - I'm calling it my original :) 

Well, another Team Training day is done and dusted, with some gorgeous new products added to the range. The projects this time focused largely on mixed media, which I don't do, so I just went ahead and did my own thing.

This is the set project.

This is my version of it. Of course, the pages will eventually have a title and some journaling.

As I won't use the mixed media products as set out in the project, there's no point buying them just for 1 project, so I improvised with what I have. I'm happy with my effort, and it was so stress free. Last time, when I followed the instructions, they were pretty disjointed and we all had trouble with them. It took 8 hours to finish.

This time, I was done in 6 hours, and didn't have to bother trying to follow the directions, which the other ladies said were even harder to follow that the last lot. lol

But I do really enjoy TTD, spending the day scrapping with a nice bunch of girls is always a great way to spend the day. I'm already looking forward to the next one in May.