St. Patrick's Day Party

You can put your Fiskars tools to work to make it fun and easy.

I'm not really able to let any celebration pass without making cupcakes. They are just so happy and festive! One of my favorite ways to make shamrocks is by combining hearts. Fiskars has lots of heart punches and shape templates, and I enjoy putting my standard punches to creative use. Here I used the heart pop-up punch for cupcake toppers. Simply punch four hearts, fold each in half, and adhere radiating from center of a punched white circle. For dimension, only add adhesive to one half of heart so other half pops out. Layer onto scalloped circles in assorted rainbow colors.

For additional shamrock dimensional goodness, I added accordion clovers to my backdrop. For best results use a non-textured, lightweight cardstock. Trim to 5.5 by 10 inches and using a scoring blade in your trimmer, score every 1.25 inches. Accordion fold and staple at center. Cut a very deep half-scallop from each end and fan out, stapling ends to each other. Add a glue dot or strong adhesive between each set of two scallops to form clover leaves.

I like to add fun to the table, too. For a cute (and delicious) place card, adhere layered colorful circles in rainbow order cut in ascending sizes using the circle cutter on a craft mat. Cut the circle in half to create two rainbows. Add a punched name cloud on one end and a gold treat at the other end of the rainbow.

Leprechauns are mischievous little guys, so be sure to have fun with decorating! Here I've added leprechaun shoe prints running across the table. These are very easy to make. Just clip off the smaller hump from a punched Funky Heart. This ends up as the heel while the rest is the main print!

For a final fun touch at the table setting, create a pinched holder for your non-green napkin! Adhere paper to clothespin and trim off excess with craft knife. Add a shamrock by cutting a small "V" between every two petals of the Daisy pop-up punch (see leprechaun demo below for example).

A fun activity for St. Patrick's Day is a treasure hunt. I created the simplest little leprechaun paper-pieced face for mass producing on clue cards. A speech bubble cut from a shape template using the Ultra ShapeXpress adds to the fun.

To create this super easy leprechaun, punch a large scalloped circle, medium circle, part of a label (see photo below), and a Daisy pop-up punch. Cut a "V" between every two petals (as above) using micro-tip scissors.

This new label punch is obviously very useful as a label, but it pulls double duty as a derby hat when cropped slightly to even out the brim. All of the shapes used for this leprechaun are standard shapes that get a lot of use. It's fun using them in creative ways!