Stampin' Up! gifts for France

Olivia left at 0130 on Friday morning to travel Cahors on her french exchange trip.  She wanted to take gifts for her new penfriend Amandine and her parents and so I promised I would make some for her.  The gifts included this rather nicely wrapped (if I say so myself) cookie press.  I'm just adoring the new Comfort Cafe designer series papers which I used to wrap all the gifts. 

You'll also see that I stamped on the new cotton ribbon available from the Stampin' Up! Autumn/ Winter catalogue.  I stamped on it with the Border Banter stamp set using cajun craze ink.  A vintage tag from the retired stock of last year and a new brushed bronze designer button added just enough vvv voom!

On the right is a gift for Amandine's father.  Men aren't easy to buy for at the best of times and when you don't know the person even harder.  I didn't feel we could send chocolates or wine to France...... and so this neat package contains a tin of mints labelled 'THE BOSS'. 

Amandine and her mum were much easier to make for...  I used the sparkly vintage faceted buttons to make a button bracelet for Beattrice and Olivia chose the colours that she thought Amandine would like for her button bracelet.  I cased Jenni Pauli's idea for decorating empty button boxes as the gift wrap for these.

I believe the gifts were well received and by all accounts Olivia is having a wonderful time.  She's spent the first weekend with the family and today went into the french school to meet her english school friends and those of Amandine, before visiting some historical venues in the city of Cahors. 

I'll share one more gift with you tomorrow. 

Have a great evening Zx

Supplies

Stamps - broadsheet alphabet, mixed bunch, tiny tags, border banter

inks - cajun craze, midnight muse

card stock - whisper white, midnight muse, summer starfruit, soft suede, vellum

accessories - blossom punch, labels framelit dies, designer buttons, large and small pearls, crumb cake seam binding, dimensionals, cotton ribbon