JB2618: Stuck on You

Stephanie and I are celebrating STICKERS this fortnight at Jingle Belles, a crafty must-have that we both still absolutely adore; and we're guessing that, like us, you have a little stash of holiday stickers you could raid for this challenge.

Probably my most hoarded stickers are the Basic Grey alphabet sheets that came with all of their holiday collection packs back in the day. It's not that I didn't use them at the time, or in the meantime; but nevertheless I've amassed a bit of a collection... though admittedly not all of them still have any vowels left. So this week I decided to mix and match several colorways to make a fun texty background for my card. Then I added some nice big ornament stickers from BG's Figgy collection, a mat of red, and some machine stitching around the edges et voila!

JB2618: Stuck on You runs until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, September 9th. Head on over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's card and start planning what you will make with STICKERS!

Yeti to Party?

 

Holiday Jumpstart: Yeti to Party is Paper Anthology's newest holiday card kit, which features a handsome yeti in a snowy wonderland. It's available exclusively in our Paper Anthology Design Etsy Shop.

Paper Anthology’s Holiday Jumpstart Card Kit is our pre-packaged kit that includes everything you need (except adhesive, optional white ink, and coloring tools) to complete FIVE copies of this new original holiday card design. This edition is called “Yeti to Party” because of the aforementioned yeti, who's ready to make your holiday even more festive!

We all love the IDEA of making holiday cards throughout the year, instead being overloaded in November and December; but sometimes it’s hard to be inspired during the “off-season”. That issue is solved by this pre-packaged kit, which features everything you need (except adhesive, optional white ink, and coloring tools) to complete five copies of this original design. Also included are complete written instructions (not pictured, but included!) and a nice big photo for reference.

Please note that the yeti images are stamped in Archival Ink, making water-based markers or colored pencils the best choice for coloring!

This kit contains:

Five Cable Knit embossed panels, with rounded corners
Five 4 x 1.5" border strips with icicle punched edge
Five deep blue squares, embossed with Snow Flurries and decorative corners
Five white square mats with decorative corners
Ten pale green patterned paper diecut trees
Five Yetis stamped with Archival Jet Black Ink, ready to color
Five "Yeti to Party?" stamped sentiments (not pictured, but included!)
Five small punched snowflakes
Five medium punched snowflakes
Five large punched snowflakes
Five white A2 cards

CLICK HERE to go to the Yeti to Party page of the Paper Anthology Design Etsy Shop and check out our other Holiday Jumpstart Kits while you're there.

There's GNOME Place Like Home

Eyelet Outlet Gnome 2 Brads and Girl Gnome Brads were literally made for each other; which might be why they add exponential levels of cuteness to any project. These gnomes are showing off their beautiful mushroom home, surrounded by Sun and Cloud Brads, a White Daisy Brad, a green Leaf Brad and a Mini Bee.

Gnome Home Shopping List:

Gnome 2 Brads

Girl Gnome Brads

Sun and Cloud Brads

White Daisy Brads

Leaf Brads

Mini Bee Brads

Just a reminder that at the end of December 2026 Suzanne, Tony and the Eyelet Outlet Website will all be taking a well-deserved retirement; be sure to stock up on all your favorite brads, bling, eyelets and embellishments before they're gone!

SOS581: Super Sketchy

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash it's one of my favorite types of challenge: we're getting SKETCHY, woohoo! And it's a beauty, too: 

Here's my card:

I've actually done a very faithful take on the sketch but it's VERY embellished so I hope you can see "the bones" lol. Nearly everything on here is from 49 and Market's Kaleidoscope and Spectrum Gardenia collections, which is unusual for me, but I just kept finding bits I liked, so I went with it. There are patterned papers, diecuts, laser cuts, ephemera and tags... all inked and stacked and combined into the pattern of the fab sketch... though my focal point is slightly to the right of center, to accommodate the gorgeous flowers on the patterned paper base.

SOS581: Let's Get Sketchy runs until the evening of Monday, September 7th; so be sure to check out the SOS Crew cards and start planning what you'll link up with us this time.

Bold and Splashy Mandala Monday

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that a crafter in possession of new inks (in this case from the latest release of Stellar Inks from Simon Hurley and Ranger) must test them out, ASAP.  And thus I have done so, in mandala form, obviously:

I chose five of the newest shades: Roar!, Red Flag, Siren Song, Overzealous and Cold Shoulder. I used one of my favorite watercoloring methods to create the basic shapes; by smooshing each ink pad (sequentially) onto my craft sheet and using a waterbrush to pick up the ink and paint with it in my Dina Wakley MEdia Watercolor Journal. Then I flicked clear water over the design and blotted up some of the color, for a fun mottled effect. When the whole thing was dry, I added black and white outlines (with a Letter It Fineliner and a Posca Paint Pen, respectively) and at the very end I flicked some Dina Wakley White Gloss Spray onto the design.

I hope your week is off to a bold and colorful start! ♥

Circling Back

A lot of my collages are built around a particular color; but some are built around a shape... and as you can see, this is one of the latter. Dina Wakley has quite a few designs that feature circles, and the script transparencies from Pattern Play and some older Collage Paper icons that look a bit like extra large postmarks are two such, so I started with those; and then added circles of varying sizes cut from Typed Ledgers and dotty Chroma Transparencies from the Grunge Specimens pack. 

I don't always have a plan when I start a collage... (and I don't always follow the plan even when I have one, lol!) ...but in this case I had started out with the intention of combining the beautiful lady (from an older set of Transparencies that's, alas, out of print) and the multicolor butterflies from the Flutters Rub-On set, and that's exactly what I did.

I thought the collage was finished at that point, but when I came back to it later, the whole thing felt a bit "floaty" (super-precise collage term there) and so I anchored it with a few strips of Dina's Washi Tape (from an older pack; Set 2, probably) running vertically at the top of the page and horizontally at the bottom. Et Voila!  

Masculine Merriment (Week 2)

It's the second week of making "Guy Cards" at Jingle Belles, by which we mean holiday cards with a masculine vibe. Here's mine:

This card is 99% composed of gorgeous vintage-themed elements from Tim Holtz's Idea-ology Christmas Emporium Layers, a curated collection of elements that I snagged on the Ranger website. I've added in a few paper scraps, some twine, and woodgrain background. I distressed the edges of literally every single piece, which might arguably be considered "too much" but it was quite relaxing and soothing to do, so there's that. 

JB2617 Masculine Merriment runs until the evening of next Wednesday, August 26th. Link your newly made, holiday "guy cards" on the Masculine Merriment post at Jingle Belles.