Chinese New Year

Celebrate:  The Year of the Snake

My blog friend Emily Liephart has organized a fun-filled Chinese New Year Blog Hop.

What a great way to showcase Chinese culture and brighten up a winter weekend! There are seven other talented designers participating on the hop, as well as seven craft sponsors. There's fabulous artwork, free digis, chances to win five great prizes from the sponsors for commenting, plus an opportunity to join the celebration and play along! The festival runs until Feb. 15th, 2013. 

Lots of time to check it all out!

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We celebrated my eldest son's birthday this past weekend. He was born in Vancouver, Canada, where we soaked up quite a bit of Asian culture, thanks to friends from Hong Kong and Taiwan. I hadn't made a birthday card yet but was inspired by all the red and gold on the hop.

I think these are really dragons, not snakes!

I thought I had some Chinese motif rubber stamps somewhere in my stash, but turned up some Celtic ones instead. Some of the motifs looked kinda snake-like so I just went with those--stamped in Versa-mark on red and heat-embossed with gold. I used a CTMH stamp for the greetings. Chinese lanterns are hand-cut, and the streamers drawn with a metallic gold pen.

Tradition at Chinese New Year involves giving gifts of cash in red envelopes, so the inside of the card includes a red pouch for some nice new RED Canadian bills...

My son was very happy with his gift and card, and went out to celebrate with his friends!

Head on over to the hop, and get inspired!