You Are SEW Amazing

What's cuter than Lawn Fawn mice who can sew? Lawn Fawn mice who can sew and are surrounded by Eyelet Outlet Thread Brads, Scissors, Dressform and Dress Brads... with accents of Bright Stitched Flower Brads, of course! 

Check out ALL of the amazing Brads, Washi Tape, Flowers, Bling and more in the Eyelet Outlet Online Store; then check out our Tradeshow Schedule to see when the Eyelet Outlet Booth will be visiting a town near you!

Is it SPRING Yet?!

As Kermit the Frog once observed, "It's Not Easy Being Green" and although we've taken it as our challenge title this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash, as a matter of fact, it's not alllllll that difficult to make a card that is *mostly* green... which is what we'd like to see this time. Here's my card:

I've literally raided DECADES of fine stashular items for this one: My base is an ancient Hambly Transparency; the center panel is Prima patterned paper circa... maybe 2009? Those beautiful Dina Wakley Media Scribbly Birds from Ranger made their debut in 2014, and yet are still in print and have spawned holiday as well as mini versions. The leaves are from a Catherine Pooler die set called Perfect Foliage which I acquired at Paper Anthology during the 2020 lockdown. And finally, the scraps on the which the birds are stamped and leaves are diecut are a mixture of ancient Basic Grey and new-ish Craft Consortium. My current trusty Dymo Label Maker is only a few years old, but I have had/used one for cardmaking since at least the turn of this century!

Our SOS516: It's Not Easy Being Green challenge will run until Monday evening, March 11th; why not unearth some of your favorite older stash items and play along?

It's a Very Vecchi Mandala Monday

This week I've combined some of my all-time favorite Wendy Vecchi products, stretching from her brand new Spellbinders' Garden Collection (Garden Party Stencils and Heartfelt Thanks & Scallops Dies); to her Ranger Archival Inks (full list of colors below); and all the way back to her gorgeous Studio 490 stamps and stencils to make a massive multi-media mandala! 

I used the older Studio 490 background stamps and stencils to create seven different panels of patterned paper. I used one for the central circle and one for the background; then diecut with all five sizes of Heart dies from Heartfelt Thanks to make the petals. For the center medallion I used the Garden Party Stencils WITHOUT the stamp, deciding instead to use a black finepoint Letter It Fineliner to add some really rough outlines that fitted the funky/grungy mood of the piece.

Wendy Vecchi Designer Series Archival Ink colors used are: Rosey Posey, Pink Peony, Orange Blossom, Sunflower, Tea Rose, Prickly Pear, Leaf Green, Cornflower, Sky Blue and  Night Sky.

TURTLE-y Awesome

Meet Shelly Turtletaub, the cutest Sunflower Turtle you've ever seen! Ok, possibly the only Sunflower Turtle you've ever seen. Even as a keen Amigurumian* I've only just stumbled upon the bewilderingly awesome world of crocheted novelty turtles** there are strawberry turtles, cupcake turtles, pancake and bacon turtles, (I swear I'm not making this up!) cherry pie turtles, bowl of cereal turtles, succulent turtles, ice cream sundae turtles, cheeseburger turtles and every kind of flower turtle you can possibly imagine, including (circling back to Shelly) Sunflower Turtles!

This Crochet Sunflower Turtle Pattern from Heathers Boutique US Etsy Shop was made by special request. I used Vanna's Choice from Lion Brand Yarn, but to achieve a slightly larger turtle (from snoot to tail Shelly measures about 11") I held two strands together and used a J hook. Colors used: Honey (shell); Mustard (petals); and one strand of Sweet Pea with one strand of Dusty Green for the rest... a combination I devised because I didn't have enough of either color to make all the parts; as it turned out, the slightly mottled coloring is much more Turtle-y than either would've been alone! (I had a Bob-Ross-style "happy accidents" moment when this occurred!) :)

If you were going to design a "Crossover Creature" what would it be? Off the top of my head, my favorite ideas so far are... let's see... Banana Stegosaurus? Daisy Jellyfish? Ice Cream Cone Planets? Hmmmmm... 

*Probably technically not a word, but it should be!!!

**Seriously, there are soooooo many and plenty have free patterns available, but I've LINKED TO the strand on Etsy because it had the most photos in one place together!

Text Me... Again!

This week at Jingle Belles we're still creating Text-y cards - cards that prominently feature TEXT; as a background, as word art, or even just an oversized sentiment! Here's my card: 

Stephanie gave me this beautiful Uniko Christmas Block Party Cover Stamp a couple of years ago and I don't use it nearly enough! I stamped it once (in Ranger Jet Black Archival) on plain white cardstock; then re-stamped the Santa, the Merry and the holly leaves on scraps of patterned paper which I fussycut and pieced into the design. I worked in a little more color with markers and pencils, then added a couple of Eyelet Outlet Matte Finish Enamel Dots, lots of tiny White Pearls, and five styles of EO Brads... can you spot them all?*

Jingle Belles' "Text Me" Challenge runs until next Wednesday evening, February 28th and all holiday cardmakers are invited to join the fun!

*From top to bottom the brad styles are: Star, Gift Brad, Pine Tree, Poinsettia and Candy Cane Brad.

Stickles Glitter Gel Grand Greenery Greeting by Lauren Bergold

Here's a shocking true confession: Until recently, I had somehow never used Stickles Glitter Gels; but I'm making up for lost time, because now I'm OBSESSED with their glorious glittery goodness. Today I'm up on the Ranger Project Page showing how crisply they apply through a stencil, how beautifully they coordinate with Ranger's Archival Ink color palette, and how wonderfully dramatic the different sizes and shapes of glitter look on the finished project, a card I made featuring Simon Hurley's beautiful Grand Greenery Stencil and luscious Watercolor Flowers Stamp Set. Hop over to Ranger to read all about it!

Bird Words

If, like me (Lauren) you enjoy watching the birds at your backyard feeder, you will have noticed quite a bit of mealtime chatter, and you may have wondered what it's all about. With the help of our handsome Eyelet Outlet Bluebird and Robin Brads and some fun speech bubbles, here is my fanciful idea of what those birds are saying to each other. Card backgrounds made from Wide Sky Washi, Wood Tape and Music Note Washi Tape.

Eyelet Outlet has Birds, Bugs, Farm Animals, Jungle Critters, Fish, Crustaceans, Reptiles, Cats, Dogs, Deer,  and... well, pretty much ANY cute critter you could possibly want to add to your papercrafting projects!\

February 19th? Already?!

It's the second-to-last Mandala Monday of February (already?!) and this one is colorful in a restrained sort of way; and... more unusually... pretty close to being entirely symmetrical! Test-driving the new set of 2.5mm Posca Paint Pens that Gina gave me for Christmas, mixed in with some of my older .7mm ones, in my Dina Wakley 6x6 Kraft Journal from Ranger; which, incidentally, is an absolutely wonderful size to work in and I'm enjoying very much!

Wavy Gravy Weekend

Here are a couple of funky watercolor panels that are almost too simple to post but... I did use my Simon Hurley Dye Ink pads in a new way and I so enjoyed making them, I figured I'd just roll with it. The "new" inking technique is basically just a funky version of the good old Direct to Paper method: I chose a bunch of analogous colors, then used the corners of each to draw a swoosh across the paper. I experimented with more/less pressure, and varied the angle at which I held the ink pads against the paper to see what sort of marks could be made. When I had a "base" of color... (there were still white areas of paper showing, but the basic idea and shapes were there) ...I took a waterbrush and dragged the colors into, around, and over each other. When the paper was completely covered with ink, I let it dry before coming back in with white and gold paint pens to add a bit more structure to the lines. Then I used two sizes of black Letter It Fineliners to outline the paint pen areas, and also to create the impression of more dimension within the various colors. Finally, I flicked the whole thing with clear water and let it sit for five minutes before blotting off the excess. Proof of how much more fun this is to DO rather than read (or write) about: I made the second panel before the first one was even fully dry!!! 

It's somewhat important to use a palette composed of colors that all blend well together. If you don't know which shades will fuse into cool new colors and which will make mud, I highly (HIGHLY) 

recommend purchasing (or bookmarking online) a color wheel! In the meantime, the junior high school acronym we learned to memorize the colors of the spectrum in order : ROY G BIV ...which stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet... is most helpful! Colors that are directly next to each other on the wheel (and in the acronym) are analogous and basically guaranteed to blend well; this includes looping around from Indigo and Violet to Red, btw. If this sounds like a boring limitation, remember that within each color, there are MANY different hues and they're all fair game!

JB2404: Text Me

This fortnight's Jingle Belles theme is called, "TEXT ME" for which we'd like you to create a holiday card that celebrates text. That might mean using letter stickers, dictionary pages, texty patterned paper, or just creating a card where the sentiment is the star... just using a small sentiment doesn't count - text of some kind should be the star of the show. Use your words, get creative and make sure you get TEXTY!

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I used a Memory Box's two-layer Brilliant Joy die set to make a set of holiday card kits for Paper Anthology, and wound up with... I suppose you could say... an excess of joy! I glued them into little stacks of three, so they'd have a little more depth, then used them to create a text-y background on a piece of Photoplay plaid paper, which I augmented with (ancient!) vellum poinsettia stickers, as well as Eyelet Outlet Poinsettia, Cardinal, Cardinal Profile and Female Cardinal Brads. I trimmed a sentiment from a red texty patterned paper (Elle's Studio, I think?) and matted the whole thing on another alphabet-patterned paper from Recollections. It's definitely different from anything I've made recently, but I love how it turned out!

Jingle Belles' Text Me challenge runs until Wednesday evening, February 28th and if you're reading this, you're officially invited to join us!

Happy Valentine's Day

The Eyelet Outlet Bear Brads (and their admiring humans) wish you a BEARY Happy Valentine's Day! On this card they're joined by a few Heart Brads as well as Vertical and Horizontal Heart Tape, Skinny Heart Tape and the Gold Foil Tape from our Valentine Tape Set.

Eyelet Outlet has all the Brads, Tapes and Embellies you LOVE; check out our 2024 Tradeshow Schedule to find out when we'll be visiting a town near you!

SOS515: Put Your Best Face Forward

Time for a brand new challenge at Shopping Our Stash, and if you've surmised, from the title, that the brief is to include a human face on your card, well done, you're exactly right!

Something I learned while choosing supplies for this challenge is that I have A LOT more cute critter stamps than I do humans. I'm sure that says something about me, but let's move on! I've definitely had MFT's Polynesian Paradise stamp set for years and years (possibly a decade?) and I suspect it's probably out of print, but I still love it and use it, as you can see. This time I stamped all the elements on scraps of ancient, Basic Grey not-quite-solid-colored papers, then added a bit of shading on top with my Prismacolor pencils. I diecut that super-chunky Lawn Fawn sentiment twice, so that I could add the white layer behind the red and have it pop out a bit more. I also used a black brush pen to add just a tiny bit of depth around the edges for the same reason. The square panel with the foliage is from a company called Paperhouse and I have no idea how I came to have it; behind that is more Basic Grey solid-not-solid goodness. 

SOS's Put Your Best Face Forward challenge runs until the evening of February 26 and we'd love for you to join the fun!

The Mandala's So Bright, You Gotta Wear Shades

It's a Dramatically Deconstructed Mandala Monday, in which all of the usual shapes have been included, but they're kind of floating across the page in quite a casual manner. Because, afterall, Mandala Monday IS still MONDAY, isn't it?!

One Die Set, Three Ways: Wendy Vecchi Vintage Florals

Longing for Spring? Join me at Paper Anthology for a bright and bloomin' class, featuring Wendy Vecchi's beautiful new Vintage Florals die set; plus additional elements from Wendy'c Garden Collection by Spellbinders. We'll do some diecutting (obviously, lol) including the inset diecut technique; we'll hand-ink a beautiful set of blooms; and create a big (BIG!) blossom using one of Wendy's own Tip Tuesday ideas! 

Visit the Paper Anthology Blog for all the dates, details and sign-up information. Paper Anthology is located at 717 US Highway 46 in Kenvil, New Jersey in the heart of beautiful Morris County, accessible by Routes 80, 10 and 202/206. Click here to see it on an interactive map!

Seeing RED!

It's the second week of our "Rudolph the RED-Nosed Reindeer" theme at Jingle Belles, so we're still creating holiday cards that are predominantly red!

I recently got this beautiful Altenew Perfect Poinsettia 3D Embossing Folder at Paper Anthology, and I couldn't wait to use it! I embossed the design on watercolor paper, added color by scribbling all my favorite RED (plus a bit of yellow gold) Tombow Dual Brush Pens onto my craft mat, then picking them up with a waterbrush and painting the flowers. When the panel was thoroughly dry, I added some RED Metallic Rub-On to make the design stand out even more, with a bit of Sunburst Stickles on the berries. I diecut the sentiment (ancient Hero Arts) from both deep red cardstock and Red Non-Shed Glitter Paper, which I also used to mat my card. It's a poor workwoman who blames her tools, and a poor blogger who blames her camera, but I have to tell you that this photo reallllllly does not do justice to all the tones, dimension and shimmer of the original!

Be sure to hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's beautiful card (Spoiler Alert: It's RED!!!) and start planning what you'll link up with us. The challenge runs until next Wednesday evening, February 14th.

It's a DINO-Mite Day

Eyelet Outlet Dinosaur Brads make any Valentine or birthday card more RAWR-some! This handsome family is frolicking in the distance, under a blue sky bright with Sun and Cloud Brads. The diecut dino in the foreground is looking cute in every sense because he (or she?) is sporting a Small Eye Brad. 

The diecut dino is Spellbinders' Birthday Dinosaur, new to Paper Anthology, as is the Monster Birthday Sentiment set, which coordinates with several super-cute Spellbinders die sets, including a Panda, a Dragon and Monsters so cute, it's scary! 

Any time you need to make a scene, The Eyelet Outlet Online Store has the perfect brads for all occasions; and trade show season is just around the corner: check out our full 2024 Trade Show Schedule to see when the Eyelet Outlet Booth will be in YOUR town!

Dragon Mandala

The Lunar New Year is technically still a few days away (February 10th) but it's never too early to celebrate, imo, especially since it's a Dragon Year (my Chinese zodiac sign) and specifically a Wood Dragon Year (I was born in 1964). I've read conflicting ideas about whether the year of one's own sign is generally lucky OR the reverse. But I love dragons, and mandalas, as well as interesting holidays and traditions, so let's just go with it! 

I found this beautiful dragon illustration in a children's book; the zodiac calendar and sheet music are from my stash; and all the flowers and circle motifs are cut from gorgeous paper I found at Pearl River Mart. The substrate for all this collagey goodness is my Dina Wakley 6x6 Kraft Journal from Ranger.

Enjoy Your Day

Happy mail ALWAYS makes my day, so I try to make sure I send out plenty of special cards to friends and family. This A7 card features Wendy Vecchi's gorgeous Vintage Florals die set (new from Spellbinders) colored with three shades of yellow Archival Ink from Ranger (Buttercup, Sunflower and Goldenrod, to be precise) and popped up on layers of foam tape for extra dimension.

My plan for this card was to make a mostly-white collage of vintage text paper, run it through with the Flowers and Foliage 3D Embossing Folder, and use that for the background. Unfortunately, the text paper kind of hid more of the embossed flowers than I liked, so I used a Mini Blending Tool to apply yellow and green Archival to the design, which is kind of cool; but the embossing still didn't show up as much as I had hoped. However, a torn section of the collaged piece did make a nice accent for a plain white panel that I cut out with the largest die from the Heartfelt Thanks and Scallops set. Then I embossed plain white cardstock with the folder, added a little bit of Buttercup Archival to the flowers and some Leaf Green around the edges and finally, I had the look I was going for! 

I used one of the label-maker-style sentiments from the Garden Party Stamp and Die set as a sentiment, et voila! Be sure to check out Wendy Vecchi's Instagram Account and the Make Art with Wendy Vecchi Facebook Group for lots more ideas and inspiration for using Wendy's fabulous Garden Party Collection!

JB2403: Rudolph the RED-Nosed Reindeer

This fortnight at Jingle Belles we're SEEING RED... in a good way! We're making cards in any size and shape, featuring any theme, with any ingredients but... they need to be predominantly RED! Sound like fun? Then why not join Stephanie and myself and get a jump on those holiday cards!

This card is an example of what my friend Leslie would've called "parts is parts"! By which I mean, I didn't actually create any of the elements, I just cut out, cut up or arranged existing elements. And I'm not to proud to admit it! Let's face it, if we're going to make a holiday card every week for the next forty-eight or so weeks, they're probably not all going to have several hours of stamping, embossing and fancy coloring, and that's FINE! In this case, I used an amazing sketch from Atlantic Hearts (#561) for which the challenge was over, but I fell in love with the distinctive "three triangles" concept and I thank them for the inspiration. All of the elements on top were cut or diecut from various older journal cards and patterned paper (Authentique, Simple Stories and American Crafts to name a few) and I'm really very happy with the result.

Our Rudolph the RED-Nosed Reindeer challenge runs until the evening of Wednesday, February 14th (aka Valentine's Day) and all holiday cardmakers are welcome to join us at Jingle Belles!

Trading Hearts Layered Embossing Cards

There's a pair of bear pairs on the Ranger Product Page today, celebrating the fact that, here in the Northern Hemisphere, Valentine's Day is a winter holiday. Though, for that matter, in places where polar bears live, Easter is also a winter holiday... and sometimes Memorial Day, too! Luckily, there are FIVE different Ranger Embossing Powders in play here (Blue, Green, Turquoise, Snowflake Tinsel and Black) and all that heat gun action is bound to warm it up a bit, right? Stamps from Simon Hurley create Winter Woodland set; layering stencils from the Dazzling Diamond and Winter Scene Maker sets. Archival Inks in Seafarer, Emerald and Jet Black also play a part. Hop over to the full post for step-by-step details!