Rubber Stamping & Card Making with Yapha

Today is the last day of our first ANNUAL Hanukkah Blog Hop! We are overwhelmed with the extremely positive response we have received about this hop and all the amazing projects! We hope you were inspired to create and think outside the box when it comes to Jewish related projects! Watch out for future Jewish themed hops…we’ve already discussed one for Passover which is at the end of March 2013!

Thank you to everyone who has visited the first 8 days of the hop. We hope you have enjoyed all the projects and found lots of inspiration! If this is your first visit, you can always go back and visit Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Today is the ninth day of the blog hop. As you know, there are only eight days of Hanukkah, but nine candles. The ninth candle is the Shamash (or helper) candle that you use to light all of the others. In honor of that, we are all making candle-themed projects for this, the shamash day of our blog hop. My project is a box of Hanukkah themed tea light candles. I used the basic tutorial from Tanya, and modified it to hold eight candles instead of four. I will have a tutorial on making the box on my blog tomorrow.

Here is the outside of the box. (I used Andi’s fabulous idea of including the number 8!)

Stamps: Jewish Celebrations, Every Little Bit, Memorable Moments
Ink: Midnight Muse, Marina Mist, Daffodil Delight
Paper: Marina Mist, Midnight Muse, Daffodil Delight, Whisper White
Other: Midnight Muse Stitched Satin Ribbon, Apothecary Accents Framelits, Simply Scored

This is the box partially opened. You can see half of the candles.

Finally, here is a look at all of the candles. This would make a lovely hostess gift if someone invites you over for latkes. Or you can make your own menorah with them for the eighth night! You just need to add a shamash.

Cindy had these absolutely adorable boxes of tea light candles posted on her blog, and she was kind enough to include the directions to make them! I decided to make a box for my fabulous library assistant as part of her Christmas gift.

Since both her first and last name start with A, I put that on the candles themselves in matching colors.

Stamps: Lovely Letters
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive
Paper: Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive
Other: Holiday Windows Mover & Shapers Dies, Old Olive Satin Ribbon, Simply Scored, 1 3/8″ Circle Punch, tissue paper (for the candles)

I’m really pleasd with how easy this was to put together, and how fabulously they came out!

I had the best convention buddy this year. Really & truly. She sent me back my swaps along with a box full of fun surprises. I knew I wanted to make her one more thing and send it out to her as a thank you. When I saw Elizabeth’s great set of candles, I pulled up Tanya’s excellent directions, and made my own! Don’t the Wisteria Wonder and Elegant Eggplant look great together?

Stamps: Flower Fest
Ink: Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Lucky Limeade
Paper: Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White
Other: Lucky Limeade Ruffled Ribbon, tissue paper, tea lights

This was a super fun gift to make! (And it will be even easier when Stampin’ Up’s own new scoring tool, Simply Scored comes out next month!)

A huge thank you to Tanya for posting this adorable snowflake tea light candle set on her blog! After seeing her post so many different versions of the tea lights, I just had to try it. It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be! In fact, we are going to be making these as our final project in the after-school kids’ class. As like a grand finale. With a lot of supervision, of course. The snowflake is cut out of metal flashing with the Big Shot.I took Tanya’s advice and ran it back and forth several times before taking it out of the Big Shot.

(Note: Don’t buy the flashing shingles. They don’t work. Get the flashing on a roll. I found I could cut it with my Craft & Rubber scissors — on sale until Tuesday!)

Stamps: Northern Hearts
Ink: Marina Mist
Other: Tissue Paper, 1 1/4″ Circle Punch, 1/16″ Handheld Circle Punch, Heat Tool, Snowflake #2 Originals Die, Big Shot

For a complete tutorial on making the tea lights, see Tanya’s Blog.