DIY Chinese New Year Red Envelope

Today is Chinese New Year’s Eve. We always have a big homemade dinner on the Eve to celebrate and then leftovers the day after because you’re not supposed to cook or do any work on Chinese New Year ’s Day. In addition to all of the yummy food, one of the big traditions is to hand out red envelopes (typically married people hand them out to unmarried people). We thought it’d be a cool idea to make our own red envelope in honour of the year of the rooster and give you a little step by step guide so that you too can make your own little red Chinese New Year envelopes. 

2017 is the year of the Fire Rooster. Rooster is almost the epitome of fidelity and punctuality. People born in the Year of Rooster  are said to be honest, bright, communicative and ambitious. Some notable roosters are... Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Elton John, Jennifer Aniston, Cate Blanchett, Diane Sawyer, Elijah Wood, Jessica Alba, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Damon, Natalie Portman, Catherine the Great, Amelia Earhart, Rudyard Kipling, Groucho Marx, Roger Federer, Serena Williams.

You don’t need too much to make this craft. We’re keeping it simple and sticking with two colours of cardstock, a red and yellowish gold. Red and gold are what you usually find on the red envelopes, but some may have coloured pictures on them as well as red and gold symbols/pictures/words. We thought it easiest to use the Silhouette Portrait, but we realise that not everyone has one so you can easily make this craft without one as well; you’ll just have to do some cutting with the scissors.

We cut out about a 2 ½ inch rooster out of the gold/yellowish cardstock with the Silhouette. You can decorate with stickers, you can find a rooster image (we thought that would be fitting to put on the front for this year), you can draw or write symbols/pictures or you can write words on the front. Then we found a red envelope template roughly measuring 5 ¾ inches from top to bottom including the flap and then cut that out.

You can make a bigger envelope if you like, but this is the usual size for a red envelope. If you decide to go with a bigger red envelope make sure that you adjust the image on the front to that it looks the right size.

After both parts are cut, we folded the red envelope and glued it together and then glued the rooster on the front. Keep in mind that sometimes it's easier to score the parts that you are going to fold.

And here you have it, your very own homemade red envelope!

Our Favorite Blog Posts of 2016

Now that we have covered the colour of the year, we’re going to do what we did last year (see it here) and pick our favourite posts of 2016. We had some really fun ones this past year because we were planning Nicole’s wedding. There were some really fun and interesting wedding related tutorials and we did our lead up to the Royals visit and of course we did the summer of nail polish! 

Our Favourite Posts of 2016 

Wedding Shoes (February 26, 2016)-This one was one of the first wedding posts that we did. We got really into the types of shoes that brides can wear. So many choices! 

Oscar Dresses and Card (March 4, 2016) –This will always be one of my favourite posts every year. I find it really cool to pick one of the dresses and to create a completely inspired by that dress.

Flower Meanings and Messages (March 25, 2016) – This one felt like homework but in a good way. I spent many hours looking up flowers and their meanings. I should write a letter in flower language.

Perfecting the Wedding Day Look (May 13, 2016) – We spent so many fun Friday nights having friend bonding time and curling hair and doing makeup in the living room with the music playing. I’ll never forget it...it was fun and is such a special memory for us.

Father’s Day DIY Frames (June 17, 2016) – We not only showed you how to make a special keepsake in this post, but Nicole made one for her dad with a wedding picture of them in it.

13 Great Places to Hike in Canada (July 15, 2016) – Again, this one felt like homework in a good way. We both researched great places to hike in the provinces of Canada and came up with come very neat places that we’d like to go to. Some of the hikes were pretty intense though.

Texting Facts (August 19, 2016) – When I first thought about doing a texting blog I thought it would be boring but we learned a lot and I absolutely loved the Chinese texting language that we learned. 770880 :)

London Fogs (September 16, 2016) – When the Royal came to town we thought we would post about London Fogs as a part of our mini 'British' blog series. I have never had one before so Nicole thought she’d show me how to make one. Delicious!

Silver Bells Wreath (December 10, 2016) – Nicole needed a wreath to decorate her new place this year for Christmas so we turned it into a blog post and now she has a wreath that he can hang up every year.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas (December 23, 2016) – I’ve always found different languages very interesting so learning how to say “Merry Christmas” in a bunch of different languages was kinda neat.

Colour of the Year Craft

Now that we have shared with you some of our favourite colour of the year things, we are making some of our own this week. We thought that making bookmarks would be a neat way to showcase the colour of the year and we thought that we would make some bookmarks with some of our green scraps from the cards that we have made. Bookmarks are always handy to have around and they are fun to make and pretty easy to make as well. We have thought about making bookmarks to go with our cards before. We have so many scrap pieces that are perfect for making bookmarks so we’re going to test out some ideas that we have during the post this week.

Here’s what we gathered to make our bookmarks (we’re making two different ones):

Green Ink

“Inspire” Stamp

Green Cardstock (Various Shades)

Homemade Green Paper

Olive Green Ribbon

Maple Leaf Paper Punch

Magnets

Glue Tape

Glue Stick

Scissors

Bookmark #1 “Flat Green with Maple Leaves:”

First off we cut a darker green piece as the actual bookmark. Make it whatever size you like. Next we cut another lighter piece of green cardstock and used it as a layer on top of the base.

We took inspiration from the meaning of the colour of the year and punched out some maple leaves to adorn the front of the bookmark, but before we did that we glued down a thicker olive green ribbon as an accent alongside the maple leaves.

Bookmark #2 “Green Magnetic Inspire:”

For this one we cut a primary green layer similar to the size of the base of our first bookmark and then we folded it in half. Then we cut a bright green layer along with a smaller layer of our homemade paper to put on top of that.

Next we stamped “Inspire” in green ink on the top green layer. We put a scrap piece of paper down to protect the surface that we were stamping on.

Lastly, we stuck two magnets together (so they lined up). We glued one of them to one inside edge of the bookmark and then, leaving them stuck together, we glued the top magnet that was still exposed to the other side of the bookmark.

Once glued, you can open up your bookmark and attach it to the pages in your book and you will never lose your spot again!