SOS545: Hippity Hop

As you may have already guessed from the title, this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we'd like to see cards that feature bunnies; but... we'd be happy to see chicks, as well. Oh and it can be an Easter card if you want; but... it doesn't have to be. Here's what I made:

I will pretty much take any excuse to break out my Avery Elle Feels Like Home stamps and add-on sets. They are several years old (and sadly out of print, sorry) but I still adore stamping and coloring (or paper-piecing) them and making a little scene of adorable reading critters. I love how just adding a soft patterned paper print at the top two-thirds of a circle, and a brown geometric at the bottom third, makes the whole thing instantly look like a room instead of just a background; almost as much as I love stamping the armchair with Ranger Jet Black Archival Ink on top of a piece of cardstock covered in Eyelet Outlet Strawberry Washi Tape. (I would seriously love to have such a chair in my home!) Please note that I have included a bunny, a chick and even A CARROT... but it's definitely not an Easter card. :)

SOS545: Hippity Hop runs until the evening of Monday, April 21st. Check out the fabulous cards the Crew have made to inspire you at Shopping Our Stash.

Books. Cats.

The new (adorable!) Eyelet Outlet Black Cat Brads are not just for Halloween, they add feline festiveness to any card and can be found peeking around stamped or diecut corners of any description. This happy little scene also features Book Brads and Book Washi; the yellow flower from our Frog Set. 

There's a sweet bunny reading in a Green Pattern Tape armchair, which is sitting on a Strawberry Tape throw rug... stamps are from Avery Elle's Feels Like Home set, stamped in Ranger's Jet Black Archival and set atop a Wood Washi floor. The coordinating envelope also has a strip of Cat Tape.

You'll find all of the above (and so much more) in the Eyelet Outlet Online Store; and don't forget to check the Trade Show Schedule to see when the Eyelet Outlet Booth will be visiting your town this summer!

Shake It Up!

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we're celebrating my very favorite type of interactive greeting: the mighty Shaker Card! It can be plain or fancy, themed or all-occasion, any color, shape, size or style you'd like, just make sure you Shake It Up!    

I needed a card for a fellow book-lover, and was in the mood to color (!) so I grabbed my Tombows and Avery Elle's Feels Like Home Add On set, which I only got last year at Paper Anthology, but... those Nestabilities Ovals have to be 15+ years old; the Eyelet Outlet Book Brads and Book Tape date back to circa 2017 (admittedly I've restocked both, more than once) and the texty paper is so old I'm not sure whose it was anymore (it's paper-weight though, and not cardstock, which is a clue that it's got some age, lol). I had a hard time choosing between the text as background and Simple Stories' whimsical cloud paper, so I decided to split the difference, cut out the clouds and added them atop the text.

I built the shaker window upwards by cutting five or six frames with the nested oval dies and stacking them. The acetate oval is sandwiched between the top two frame layers and cardstock covered with strips of Book Tape seals in the EO Star Sequins.

Head over to Shopping Our Stash to see the super-inspiring cards the rest of the Crew have made, then start planning how YOU will Shake It Up! This challenge runs until Monday evening, September 25th.

Dino-Mite!

Eyelet Outlet Dinosaur Brads make any day both DINO-mite and REX-cellent, as this pair of adorable minicards will attest. Small shapes like these two inch circles are brilliant for building little scenes at brad scale, with just enough room for a Dino, a Tall Palm and Sun and Cloud Brads and yes, a stamped and paper-pieced volcano courtesy of Avery Elle's adorable Dino-Mite Day stamp set from Paper Anthology!

Visit the Eyelet Outlet Online Store for more brads, tapes and embellies to Make a Scene of your own; and check out our Tradeshow Schedule to find out when the Eyelet Outlet Booth will be coming your way!

KOALA-tee Reading Time

Here is my* ideal day off scenario, in card form: I'm reading, surrounded by books, with a friend or two for company! In this case the books are Eyelet Outlet Book Brads and Book Tape, the friends are a Koala Brad and a Mini Ladybug, there's a Telephone Brad in case I feel like chatting, and some Rose Brads for extra color and inspiration. I've also used Wood Washi to construct the bookshelves and Text Tape as a background.

The stamped elements are from Avery Elle's "Feels Like Home- Add On" stamps and dies, which I acquired at Paper Anthology; I've colored them with Tombow Dualbrush Pens (also from Paper Anthology!) and shaded with Prismacolor Pencils.

What does YOUR ideal day off look like? Because whatever it is, I bet Eyelet Outlet has brad and tape styles that would help you recreate it in card form!

*Technically, I am NOT a Koala Bear (I don't even like eucalyptus!) but otherwise, this is a fairly accurate representation, lol!

Tag! You're It!

Coloring (somewhat realistically; with shading, etc) is not my BEST thing and probably won't ever be but... practicing definitely helps and (me being me) each time I improve a bit I enjoy it more, which makes me want to do it more, which helps me improve. It's like the reverse of a vicious circle... what would we call that?* A virtuous circle? A benevolent circle?? Well, whatever, it helps!

At Paper Anthology, Elisabeth and I have been making Thank You tags to put inside online orders, which turns out to be an excellent excuse to break out pretty much ANY stamp or die set we feel like using. In this case that was, for the bears, Lawn Fawn's Den Sweet Den and Avery Elle's Feels Like Home Add Ons. As usual, my favorite way to do this kind of coloring is to "basecoat" all of the elements with Tombow Dualbrush Pens, then add shading and detail with Prismacolor pencils.

*While trying to work out what the opposite of a vicious circle would be, I Googled the phase, "Vicious Antonyms" which I think would be an awesome name for a band. If you have a band, and you're looking for a name, please feel free to use it!

It's the 14th of February!

I hope you'll receive your fair share love and treats today, whether they be from a Valentine, a GAL-entine, or something special from you to you! Here's a "HEART-y" shaker card featuring Avery Elle's Oval Burst Elle-ments Die which I talk more about on The Ink Pad Blog today.

Have a Stashy New Year!

A bit of a change-up for our first challenge of 2021 at Shopping Our Stash. This time we'd like to see projects which use something NEW you got over the holidays! Of course you can pair your new stuff with older goodies, if you'd like. Here's what I made:

I have two little girl birthdays coming up, so my project is a "double header" lol. Stephanie gave me the awesome Hero Arts T-Shirt Infinity Dies for Xmas and I happened to have an Avery Elle stamp set I got at Paper Anthology over the summer and somehow valiantly managed not to use at all? So I based my cards around the combination of those two items. 

I added in an older die that I love, Lawn Fawn's Happy Birthday Border, as a background; I would blanch at adding this many super skinny diecuts if I didn't have Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive, which has an excellent fine-tipped applicator and dries completely clear. I couldn't decide between yellow and blue backgrounds, so I made one of each. The yellow matches really nicely with the pink... but the white text pops more against the blue...

Hop over to SOS to see what the design team darlings have created to inspire you, then break out your NEW STUFF and join the fun! ♥

This Holly is Jolly

Hero Arts' Bold Prints cover stamps are 6" square which means you really don't need very much else to finish a nice big card! This one is called Christmas Rose and all the details of how I used it to make this card can be found on The Ink Pad Blog!

SOS420: Oh the Places You'll Go

I love making art and cards based on a specific place, so this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is definitely for me! We want to see projects that have a travel theme OR reference a specific location OR feature a map. I've got two outta three, see?

cocktail, pineapple and aloha stamps: avery elle; stamped in black ranger archival ink and colored with gansai tambi watercolors; flower, foliage and shell stickers plus faux polaroid frames: doodlebug design; sheet music and map from my stash of vintage goodies... scanned and printed slightly smaller to fit on my A7 card; patterned paper: basic grey + dcwv; sticky pearls: eyelet outlet; adhesives: elmers brand glue tape, 3m foam tape

I went with Hawaii for my location because I knew I had some cool older Doodlebug tropical collections plus my brand new Avery Elle "Aloha" mini stamp set that I was dying to use. I've even worked in bits of a vintage Honolulu tourist map and some sheet music, though both of those are actually scans so that I could resize them slightly smaller. I have less than half a sheet left of Doodle Bug's Spring Garden paper with the colorful faux polaroid frames, and I am going to miss them when they are gone, lol. Usually I make little scenes inside them, but this time I just used the stacked shapes to hold my little cluster of stickers and called it good.

Be sure to check out all of the beautiful and exotic DT creations at SOS and then start planning the Places You'll Go! ♥