Etsy Monday Tuttosicrea Everything is Created

A few years back, my husband and I went to Italy and Morocco. One of the things we learned about ourselves a long time ago is a pure "vacation" is not something we do well with, much better to have a purpose to our activity. Kevin does special wall finishes, so we went to the places where these wall finishes originated and arranged some classes.

Our trip took us from Milan to Vicenza to Venice to Florence and finally to Lake Como before we went to Marrakesh.

Of course, Italy is magical. For us, it was the evidence all around us of creativity, a pulse that persisted through hundreds of years, wars and political systems, fortune and failure. But there you will find even today artisans making a living creating beautiful and unique things, and their work is a respected part of the fabric of life there.  As we crossed the River Arno and made our way into the Artisan's Quarter in Firenze, shop after shop held a creative person at work. A mountaintop near Lake Como had tables with locally crafted teas and jellies. Milan celebrated the artisans who bring the opera to life. And so on.

Today's shop Tuttosicrea, which means "everything is created", has a beautiful selection of handmade articles.  The shop name (which I couldn't agree with more!) and the nature of her items brought me back to that trip, and the places and people we visited. A shop, a place and a country where everything is created.   Etsy says the store is based in Monza, a place I haven't been to so I checked out Google Maps. It's a little north and west of Milan, and of course beautiful.

from Google Maps imagery

Now for her wrapping magic.  Elena put together a beautiful gift wrapping package for Valentine's Day.  Handstamped paper, string, gift tags, a vial full of heart stickers and finally some beautiful polymer hearts! This would be very special wrapping for a special person.

Valentine' gift wrap package

the tags

The hearts!

She had a similar package for fall/winter:

Rustic gift package, all you see here.

Pretty stuff celebrating love, life and the magic of creation!

Wrapper of the Week Molly Mell Everything you can do with a heart!

I was poking around trying to find some good DIY Valentine's wrapping, and everything I liked came from a blog called Molly Mell.

Regina Mello has a sharp eye for the utterly adorable. This is true of her photography, food recipes and so on, but I was particularly impressed with her wrapping ideas.

For Valentine's Day, she has some great riffs on what you can do with a simple heart punch .

Like this:

Go here for a great gift tag DIY

And this was such a great idea! She used heart cut outs to cover up reindeers on some gift wrap she had bought.  Way to switch the season!

A lovely Valentine DIY

And finally, more DIY Heart Gift tags.

Cute tags, right?

So these are apropos for the season, but she has some great Christmas gift wrap ideas and a lot of very pretty photos of every day things.  Don't miss checking out her blog!