Reindeer Noses… and a free printable!

Now, I like me some fun reindeer games a fun party so I’ve been really looking forward to my husband (Chef Kev’s) Christmas work party this year. It’s always been a blast in the past (not a blast from the past – but a blast IN the past) so when I was asked to design this year’s party favours (to be on the table when guests arrive) the discussion went something like this…

Kev: “hey, will you make the party favours for my work party this year. Only if you have time, no pressure”

Elaine: {inside voice – what! Christmas! crafty stuff! Designy things! party favours? I’m SO in! … but play it cool…} Outside voice: “sigh, oh, okay… but only if you make me dinner for a week”

Kev: “I already do. Oh, and thanks”

Elaine {inside voice again – Dang! Foiled again by my quick tongue. Must. think. out details longer. next. time.} Outside voice: “right”.

So that was that. Operation design party favours had begun.

Before I lose you, here is what I did. Details below if you’ve read this far (and thanks if so).

And here is how it came to be.

I went to pinterest for some inspiration and searched ‘Christmas party favours’. I had a few criteria when searching. 1) It had to be relatively easy to do as I had to do 50 of them and 2) It had to be relatively cost effective, as well… I had to do 50 of them!

This caught my eye.

(source: “A personal touch” blog via pinterest) 

But I wanted to give it my own spin. So I set out redesigning the header card portion.

And today (well every day) it is free for you if you’d like it!

Once I had designed my header card and sticker I purchased my brown and red reindeer noses. You can buy whatever you’d like of course, but for mine I bought: milk chocolate covered caramels, malt balls and jujubes as well as dark chocolate covered espresso beans and almonds. Rudolph’s nose is a cherry sour.

I then purchased 4″x6″ treat bags (lollipop bags) at the craft store (Michaels) and convinced Chef Kev to help me divy up the chocolate!

I trimmed down my header cards that I had printed on card stock (which are actually 4.25″ wide so there is a slight over hang on each side) and scored them with my paper cutter. I happen to have a trimmer that has a setting made for scoring but you can use a bone scorer or even lightly score with an exacto blade if you are comfortable with that route (do not press hard as you will cut right through – you want to apply very light pressure to simply cut only the top fibres of your paper). You always want to score on the side that you are folding away from (so in this case, the printed side).

Score right along the edge where the red ‘front’ meets the green ‘back’.

I put the headers aside for a moment while I moved on to folding the top edge of the treat bags over (about 1/2 – 3/4″ and stapled once on each side. Chef Kev helped here too!

Then I used a tape runner (that I already had but you can get them at the craft store in the scrapbooking section) and applied a strip along the inside BACK ONLY of the card (bottom part). You don’t need to do the top/front as your round circle sticker will seal that side.

Then I lined the top of my bag fold into the crease and pressed down along the tape.

After I folded the top over I applied my round sticker (printed on “Avery 5294″ 2.5” circle label stock) to close the front part of the header card and attach it to the bag.

I actually found if I applied the sticker upside down I had more control. You may have noticed in the free template image earlier in this post that I left a blank spot where the label goes. The label stock has a bit of ‘show through’ so you could see it through the sticker if you had the pattern run across the whole card. It actually works well as you have a ‘guide’ to line your sticker up to so that each favour looks the exact same (sticker isn’t lower and higher as you look at different packages). Bonus 🙂

And now the really fun part – gluing Rudolph’s little nose on! For this I just used white craft glue and a toothpick to apply. I let the noses dry a few hours so that none would fall off in transport.

Here are a few pics of my workshop mid-nose application….

Did I mention I had to do 50 of these!?

Once they were dry it was time for the ‘after shot’!