Secret Santa Card (Invitations Concept Sneak Peak) + DIY Bee Ornament Fail

Well, since I hope my Secret Bee has received her package by now, I can share with you my holiday DIY project (really, my only holiday anything, other than a few cards and a string of lights along the gutter of our house).

All of the Bees got together and did a holiday ornament exchange, but a few of us joined the hive too late to participate, so Miss Cheeseburger got 6 of us 'newbees' organized to do our own ornament exchange. We set a $10 limit, and used Elfster.com to randomly draw names. And I got Miss Cheeseburger!

I started by making a card, using a very similar method as I will for our wedding invitations, laser cutter + layered paper. I will be doing something along these lines, but with our flower and vine motif on the cover:


For the inside, I laser cut the white card stock that acted as the bottom layer of the cover, for a reverse white on blue effect. Our invitations will have a similar feel as well, with more laser cutting on the inside, but the invites will likely be a tri fold with a pocket.


Since it was a Secret Santa gift exchange, I made a little flap at the bottom of the card, which when lifted, "revealed" who the card was from.

(isn't the Cola icon adorable with a little Santa hat?)

Next I made a sorry attempt to DIY a holiday ornament, with a cheeseburger on one side and a bee on the other side. Again, Miss Cheeseburger, I apologize for how lame these turned out. The laser cutter is usually much more cooperative, but I went through 2 packs of cheap plain ornaments from Michaels, before I had to switch to an outline version of the cheeseburger; the filled version of the icon just cracked the glass.

You can kind of see the bee on one side and cheeseburger on the other in this picture, taken right after the laser etching. Sadly, with that thin/cheap of glass, we just couldn't do a deeper/bigger/more visible etch. :(


Then, to make matters worse, I had to decorate the ornament. I had seen cute ones just stuffed with tinsel, so that's what I did, with multi-colored tinsel. Actually, it didn't look that bad, except for the fact that you couldn't even really see the etched designs on the ornament. Fail. I'm too ashamed to even take a picture.

Luckily I had a back up etched ornament, so I decided to just hang 3 little snowflakes inside it. Still, it looked pretty lame, like a cop-out, since it took hardly any effort, and wasn't that decorative. But at least the glass etchings were a little more visible.


So sorry Miss Cheeseburger! Because neither the tinsel stuffed one or the hanging snowflake one turned out that great, I sent both....maybe two lame ornaments equal one alright one though? Hopefully the extra touches on the holiday card, and the box of Ghirardelli chocolates help make up for it.


I seriously need to stick with just DIY'ing paper goods. I will definitely not be attempting laser etching glass again anytime soon!

Did you DIY any of your Christmas gifts? And have you used the design concept for your wedding invitations for other purposes?