A photo posted by Jane (@janecap14) on Dec 7, 2015 at 6:13pm PST

I made her a handbound travel journal with map covers, inspired by her travel photos. Her love of food I covered with some hand carved lino printed recipe cards as well as a quirky upcycled mini kitchen herb garden with some herb seed mats and some cute vintage glasses. Popping up a couple of times in her feed was some photos of bracelets, so I also included a little kit to make her own beaded wrap bracelet, and then a set of Christmas gift tags to top it off, before wrapping the whole lot up in brown paper & gold twine & topping them off with die cute doilies and Christmas stamps.

And then, my very own pretty parcel of delightful goodness arrived.

I was in such a rush to open it I didn’t think to grab a “real camera” photo of Laura’s stunning wrapping until after I decimated it, so my dodgy Instagram snap will have to suffice. Isn’t that wrapping so pretty? And inside it got even better.

 

 

Look at all that crafty goodness! The lovely Laura had stalked me well, and while she commented it was hard to find a craft I hadn’t tried (this is true), she did an excellent job of sending me bits, not only for a craft I haven’t tried, but that I hadn’t also picked up along the way for other crafts. In the crafty part of my package was all the supplies I needed to try paper cutting, including:

 

-A cutting mat – while I do have one, from my paper tole days as a young teen (yeah, I was the coolest teenager ever, why are you looking at me like that?), it is closing in on 20 years old and looks every day of it. Probably doesn’t help I used it at one point to cut eyelet holes with a punch. Whoops. But now I have a pretty, shiny, larger, new one, YAYY!

-An Xacto knife and refills – I have a bog standard generic scalpel from the craft store and it has nothing on the buttery goodness of the Xacto. Loving it!

-A Palamino Blackwing 602 pencil & sharpener – I was lucky enough to receive an ArtSnacks box for my birthday from a friend and inside was the Blackwing 725 Limited Edition, and I love and adore it. Hands down my favourite pencil. So I squealed when I saw I now have the 602 to add to my collection!

-An envelope of templates, some paper and a gorgeous handmade book of instructions,

-A set of little glass bottles to fill with cut paper goodness AND a bottle already filled as an example (JACKPOT)

-An acrylic block frame to fill with my experiments

-And a sample paper cut that is gorgeous!

 I also got a little indulgence pack that included a book, a golden notebook, some “American Pie” tea which smells sooooo good, and a gorgeous citrusy candle that is pure summer.

 

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I let new craft supplies lay dormant, and one afternoon while the children were playing, I got to practicing. Not bad for a first try, don’t you think?

 

 

Now, to just decide on a design and then I am going to add some papercuts to our Christmas cards!