EGG-cellent Dad

Eyelet Outlet Bacon, Egg and Toast Brads are NOT just for breakfast anymore! Add them to a funny, punny Father's Day card, or any other EGG-cellent occasion!

EGG-cellent Shopping List

Bacon, Egg and Toast Brads

Heart Enamels

Visit the Eyelet Outlet Store to see the amazing selection of brads, bling, tapes and enamels; and be sure to check out the very inspiring Idea Gallery too!

More Holiday Whimsy

As we mentioned at Jingle Belles last week, "Whimsical" describes something, "Playfully quaint, fanciful, imaginative and slightly odd; often suggesting a lighthearted, unpredictable or charmingly unusual quality not based on strict logic." So this fortnight we're asking you to use that definition and make a Whimsical holiday card… it might be mice decorating the holiday tree, a space-age midcentury modern wreath, some fun little holiday gnomes, or maybe even adorable tiny reindeer driving a red plaid car* loaded with festively wrapped holiday gifts!

I probably only use my Lawn Fawn Car Critters + Holiday Add-On stamp sets a couple of times a year. I nearly always paper-piece the little guys and use the curvy road template I made when I first got the sets; so it's a pretty similar version each time, but it always makes me smile, so I see no reason to stop now. Most of the paper used here was scrap pieces I stamped on or punched. The trees background was a freebie from Flow Magazine; the red is Carta Bella. I stamped a Lawn Fawn sentiment on graph paper and colored the gifts with Tombows.

JB2607: Walking in a Whimsical Wonderland will run until 6pm (Eastern) on Wednesday, April 8th. Hop over to Jingle Belles to see Stephanie's amazing card and link up your own.

*In case there are any auto manufacturers reading this: I would absolutely buy a red plaid car. Just sayin'...

SOS567: Bent Out of Shape

For the brand new challenge at Shopping Our Stash we'd like you to make a Shaped Card, by which we mean no squares or rectangles allowed. But round, oval, diamond, hexagonal or... my personal fave... CUPCAKE-SHAPED are all excellent choices!

I don't use my Stephanie Barnard Cupcake Fold-Its die set often enough, but to compensate, whenever it's out, I rarely stop at one cupcake-shaped card. This time I made a trio of treatos, in appropriately cupcakey colors of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. I used scraps for all of the layers except the cardbases, for which you actually need 4.5 x 12" piece of sturdy cardstock.

SOS567: Bent Out of Shape runs until the evening of Monday, February 23rd. Be sure to check out all the fab shaped cards the Crew have made to inspire you at Shopping Our Stash!

SOS555: On or In the Water

Time for a new challenge at Shopping Our Stash and thus, for "On or In the Water" we'd like to see cards and projects that feature (as you have surely guessed, lol) fish, boats, swimmers, swans, mermaids and the like; even buoys and gulls would qualify! 

This card has a whole lotta (& a whole lotl) Lawn Fawn goin' on. The fish and turtle hail from Critters in the Sea; the sea horse and sentiment from Sea Horsin' Around; and the Axolotl (YES, they are real and yes, some of them are pink!) from the miniset I Love You a Lotl. Since I found a few of these adorable aquatic friends in with their sets which had already been stamped and cut out, I decided to stamp all of them on scraps of patterned paper; it's a little more work to fussy-cut, but there's no coloring involved so it sort of balances out. The "Best Fishes" sentiment was diecut from scraps of Photoplay's Tidepool paper using Altenew's lowercase Bold Alphabet set. Believe it or not, the blue background panel is SEI Twitterpated collection (circa... 2010ish?); the yellow layer is fairly new and is from Pinkfresh Studio.

SOS555: On or In the Water runs until the evening of Monday, September 8th. Be sure to check out the inspiring cards from the SOS Crew and then start planning your own watery wondrousness.

More ICADs (Weekly Round-Up)

Another seven days of art-making on index cards has flown past and here are the ICADs that emerged:

Day 44: Hawaiian Eye Mandala Monday

It's a collage + doodles mandala with a vintage Hawaiiana theme and ingredients, plus color-coordinated doodle shapes made with Tombow Dual Brush Pens; on a vintage library catalog card.

Day 43: Giraffe

Giraffe(ish) spots with Zen Doodles!

Day 42: Bronze

 I painted and stamped a background with Ranger's Perfect Pearls (in Perfect Bronze of course) then added stamped seashells which were watercolored with diluted shades of Blush, Perfect Gold and Blue Patina. Alas you cannot really see all of the fabulous shimmer in a photo, but IRL it's very cool!

Day 41: Checkerboard

It's a fanciful, doodle-centric #checkerboard in shades of pink and orange. Because... ok, just because!

Day 49: Autumn

I’ve recently become slightly obsessed with layouts that are situated on a diagonal axis; its harder than it looks to get them right but I’m enjoying the experimentation phase.

Day 39: Off-Prompt

Just got my hands on the new Simon Hurley create Foam Ink Pads and believe me, "STELLAR" is absolutely the correct word! Super-juicy, super-intense, they ink a stamp or an applicator with just a couple of taps and you have gorgeous saturated color that blends beautifully. Yep, I'm gonna need them all. For the test-drive I went off-prompt and blended five rainbow shades through Simon's Deco Diamonds Stencil, then added lots of fun doodles with my Letter It Fineliners. 

Day 38: Bicycle (sort of)

You know the old saying, "When life gives you (paper-pieced) lemons, make incredibly funky riding-really-fast bicycle wheels!" Ok yeah, so: I started out with the idea of spokey, spinning wheels and... somehow... it all went a bit citrussy. But that's the beauty of ICAD, imo. 

Last Week's ICAD Round-Up

Here are index cards from the last seven days of ICAD fun:

Day 37: Mandala Monday

Off-prompt in observance of Mandala Monday, for which I have delved into some very cool sticker books full of rainbows and hearts, which a Special Someone gifted to me! ♥

Day 36: Road

It's a modified take on One Staple Collage: all of the paper ephemera elements are attached with one staple, but I've set them on a background that features stamping, inking and washi tape.

Day 35: Vanishing Point

This card involved more precision and symmetry than I usually attempt; and more time and effort of rendering than I usually spend, but it was both challenging and interesting to try!

Day 34: Fireworks

It’s July 4th aka Day 34 of #dyicad2025 and the appropriately seasonal prompt was a "blast" (sorry, pun intended!) to make.

Day 33: Lace

Probably the densest collection of doodley lines I have ever fit onto one white index card, wahey!

Day 32: Distortion

 A totally tangential take on distortion, which was quite fun to doodle!

Day 31: Mint Green (and Parquetry)

I pretty much love any kind of paper-piecing or pattern-making, but I especially love cutting scraps into strips and building them into #parquetry especially when there's some #mintgreen in there too! 

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Wishing you a wonderful, fun, productive creative week ahead!

(Another) ICAD Round-Up

Celebrating another week of hot weather and cool index cards! ♥

Day 30: Mandala Monday

Off-prompt today, the last Mandala Monday of June. I've gone with a very funky, deconstructed version of a mandala, for which I had a lot of fun filling in the doodles with my Letter It Fineliners and doing some shading on the bands of color with my sadly neglected Prismacolor pencils. 

(Bonus Discovery: It turns out said pencils make a pretty cool photo backdrop... just sayin'...)

Day 29: Sunrise

Going a bit tangentially from sunrise (a time of day I dislike seeing) to sunny side up... a type of egg I very much enjoy eating. Handcut and paper-pieced from the Big Box of Scraps.

Day 28: Dinosaur

I'm calling this one, "Unsung Heroes of the English Restoration" a joke which literally nobody but myself will get and I'm fine with that. 

Day 27: Pink

Super scrap-tastic PINK flowers, for which loosely drawing, hand-cutting and pattern stacking are pivotal. The background is a white gridded card which looked so stark next to the vivid blooms that I felt compelled to make a super-fast plaid with some pink brush pens!

Day 26: Fog

Debating between weather fog and brain fog... I wound up splitting the difference. Several shades of blended Ranger Distress Oxide Inks over white embossed text with stenciled letters cut out and popped up.

Day 25: Licorice or Lollipops

Here's a very very tangential take on LOLLIPOPS... they don't have sticks and look more like the swirly peppermint candies which can only be found (as far as I know) next to the cash register in an old-fashioned, family-owned pizza place.

We have an outstanding, creative and delicious local pizza place; if you ever drive 202 in Branchburg NJ you should stop at @dominicks_njboardwalkpizza ♥ They have 6-10 different pies by the slice each day; we especially love their brisket, buffalo chicken and mushroom slices, yum yum!

Day 24: Gemstone

Not the fanciest card I've ever made, but a tiny personal triumph: I've tried time after time after time to draw faceted-looking gemstones and somehow I could never do it... and finally... I can do it! In fact, after the first two, I didn't even need to look at the clipart drawing I Googled to use as a reference! Go, me!

Pink Alexandrites (my birthstone) drawn with a Letter It Fineliner from Ranger; colored with Perfect Pearls (in Blush) and a waterbrush; shadowed and highlighted with pens.

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Wishing you a wonderful, fun and creative start to the month of July; keep cool and craft on! 

Calling All Christmas Critters!

It's the second week of Animal Antics at Jingle Belles and we'd love for you to join us. Just make a card with one or more animals having some holiday fun... like this one:

Lawn Fawn's Critters in the Arctic set is probably ten years old and yet, I still find it every bit as adorable and whimsical as the first time I saw it; I'm guessing others do too as it's still available. I love coloring or (as in this case) paper-piecing those happy arctic pals; and I'm especially happy with the floral moose! I went a little more wintery than xmas, with a neutral diecut sentiment from Elizabeth Craft Designs' Winter Wishes set (also ancient and I believe out of print) since not everyone celebrates Christmas and it's nice to have a selection of cards on hand.

JB2511: Animal Antics runs until next Wednesday evening, June 4th.

Classic Basic Grey Tribute Mandala

It's a very simple card this Mandala Monday featuring some of my well-hoarded classic basic Grey patterned papers (from Lollipop Shop, Urban Prairie and Out of Print for those who remember BG from "back in the day"!) with the petals and circles diecut using Hero Arts' Heart and Circle Infinity Dies.

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.

SOS541: Thrice as Nice

You may already have guessed that this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash involves THREE of... something. In fact we'd like to see you use three (or more) patterned papers on your card. Not to brag but I've used twelve!

In the interests of full disclosure, I just got this adorable Simon Hurley Road Trip stamp set from Ranger and I was dyyyyyying to "test drive" it, but not only did I use a dozen different ancient patterns to piece it, they were all SCRAPS, so I feel like I did come down on the correct side of stash usage for this one.

Just FYI, the first company to make an all-wheel-drive car that's plaid will get my money. Meanwhile, there are lots of other beautiful and inspirational cards for you to see at SOS, before you start planning what you'll link up with us this time. The "Thrice as Nice" challenge will run until the evening of Monday, February 24th.

SOS534: Time for a Hot Drink

It's time for a new challenge at Shopping Our Stash and this time we'd like to see (as the title implies) cards and projects which feature your favorite hot beverages. Mine is (surprise!) COFFEE!

I'm fairly proud of my stash usage here, I've gathered a bunch of sadly neglected items and given them some love. Fair Warning: the three lynchpin items are sadly out of print. The Caffeinated Flamingo was one of my all-time favorites from The Rabbit Hole Designs; the Coffee Pots Embossing Folder from Darice seems to be similarly unavailable. The former was a prize I won in a Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop a few years ago; the latter a gift from my friend Michelle. I don't use either of these enough, and somehow I've NEVER used them together, so it was especially exciting to combine the pair. I stamped, colored and paper-pieced the flamingo, and I'm taking bonus points for remembering to stamp the legs onto my background paper so that I wouldn't have to cut them out. (Go, me!) I embossed the coffee pots on watercolor paper and then painted them a bit wonkily, mightily resisting the impulse to outline all of them with a .01 Fineliner. The "blahmingo" sentiment came with the flamingo; the second sentiment is from Honey Bee Stamps' Perfect Blend Stamp Set, which... you guessed it... is also out of print, but that's ok because the point of Shopping Our Stash is to unearth the older things YOU already own and I bet --like me-- you've got some awesome goodies you've forgotten all about and will enjoy reviving again!

Completely coincidentally, this theme lines up perfectly with the 2024 Fall/Winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop (they have some AMAZING prizes, if you like that sorta thing; their hop ends on Friday, 11-8-24) so you can enter both by making just the one card, woohoo! The Time for a Hot Drink Challenge (#SOS534) runs until the evening of Monday, November 18th.

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!

Here Be Monsters

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A monster, a panda and a dinosaur walk into a card kit… resulting in one of the cuuuuuuutest Paper Anthology Class-in-a-Kit selections ever: Here Be Monsters!

The monster, panda, dinosaur and sentiments are all from Spellbinders' Monster Birthday collection, but since it's a kit, all of the diecutting, stamping and pattern-combining has already been done; you can jump right to the assembling and sending. Each critter is adorably paper pieced and framed in his or her own little scene, with just the right embellishments, including various sizes of Googley eyes.  

This kit includes everything you need to make all three cards as pictured, just add adhesive! Easy to follow, step-by-step instructions are included, as well as a nice big color photograph to guide placement.

♥♥♥

Also new in our Etsy Shop, Cardmakers' Vintage and Found Paper Assortments; mini collections of curated backgrounds, perfectly sized for A2 cards.

The Here Be Monsters Class in a Kit and Cardmakers' Vintage and Found Paper Assortments are both available now in the Paper Anthology Etsy Shop, Paper Anthology Design; where you'll also find other Class in a Kit selections, Holiday Jumpstart kits and Birthday Jumpstarts, too!

Index Card a Day (Week 7)

We're rounding the corner into the second half of July (already?!) and here's my own output of Index Card Art from this past week:

ICAD24-45: Mandala Monday

Wouldja believe... It's a Marvin Mandel Mandala Monday?! In perhaps the most stunning case of vintage-paper-related serendipity EVER, I found this business card stuck into one book, and the illustration of this (completely unrelated) gentleman in another book about ten minutes later. I went looking for the name "Mandel" in an old telephone book I rescued to use in collages and did NOT find a Marvin, but there were half a dozen others which are partially obscured by the mandala petals. I used a combination of Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks, a white Posca pen and Prismacolor Pencils to add color; and Ranger's Letter It Fineliners for all the shapes. As always, my Helix Circle Maker Tool was invaluable.

ICAD24-44: Seashell

Super-literal take on the prompt: I white-embossed a set of HoneyBee Seashell stamps; blended some of my favorite Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks on top; then splattered and outlined and played with the results.

ICAD24-43: Fragile

 My collage admittedly has a #FRAGILE connection to both the prompt and to reality. But… you know… in a good way! I am especially proud of the way most of the design is built around a similar color palette; AND, especially the fact that the banana, the ballet dancer and the Chinese character for banana all have a similar shape to them. 

ICAD24-42: Off Prompt OSC

And here we have world’s most random One Staple Collage! FYI, One Staple Collage is an ICAD tradition; the brief is to create a collage which is held together with… wait for it… one staple! Slightly trickier than it sounds but a lot of fun!

ICAD24-41: Forest Green

I set out with the intention of working on today’s prompt of #FORESTGREEN and thus handcut some beautiful wonky leafy shapes from every green EXCEPT forest green… then branched off into altered/doodled patterned paper scraps in various shades of blue. But that’s why they’re called “prompts” rather than assignments… they’re meant to get you started and you can go in any direction from there! 

ICAD24-40: Off-Prompt

Today's is actually not my favorite card, although I love the funky ink-splotch colors; and stand by my decision to cut around the flower edge on the right hand side. Plus… to enjoy and learn from the process rather than focusing purely on outcome is (to me!) the true spirit of ICAD, so woohoo!

ICAD24-39: Off-Prompt

Yes, I do tend to save my scraps of patterned paper, even quite small ones that I probably shouldn't bother with, but they're excellent for stamping and paper-piecing, not to mention for those nights when I just feel like cutting out random shapes, stacking them, and arranging the result into a funky pattern. 

Week 5: Index Card a Day Round-Up

It's another week of Index Card goodness and a reminder that the Daisy Yellow Art Blog is a fine source of information and inspiration; as are a few selected Instagram accounts including mine (@llaurenb) and the official @indexcardaday feed!

ICAD24-31: Mandala Monday

It’s a loosey-goosey, wavy-gravy, somewhat deconstructed Mandala Monday; Tombows and Letter It Fineliners on an index card divider.

ICAD24-30: Sepia

A super fast One Staple Collage in (mostly) sepia!

ICAD24-29: Off-Prompt

The most random of all random collages everrrrrr?! Off-prompt and a bit fishy on Day 29.

ICAD24-28: Steampunk

A fairly tangential take on Steampunk, lots of vaguely wheel- and cog-ike shapes, glued on top of ink-blended circles of Distress Oxide Inks on a green index card. Not exactly where I thought this would be going when I started out, but that is the fun of ICAD you can take a left turn at any point and wait to see what happens next!

ICAD24-27: Ranunculus

Flashing back to a prompt I skipped last week; at the time I didn't have an interesting idea, but suddenly I thought that if I just kept cutting wonky flower layers and stacking them up, the result would be cool and possibly a bit ranunculus-like, which I think kinda worked! Also a fab use of quite a few patterned paper scraps although I still have PLENTY left... sigh...

ICAD24-26: Strawberry

Not my favorite card ever but... the pattern was fun to doodle and they are more or less recognizable as strawberries so my work here is through!

ICAD24-25-: Off-Prompt

Have already made several doodled cards involving strips or stripes, I decided to try my hand a collage of strips. I chose a few vintage book pages with similar colors, tore them vertically, glued them onto an index card, and added super-simple stitching.

♥♥♥

Not Enough Shelves!

Apparently, there are a few people in the world who think that some of us have too many books?! This is an understandable error, but in fact, as Mr. Bear (from Waffle Flower's Books & Coffee Combo stamp set) points out, the actual problem is NOT ENOUGH SHELVES! For this card, the shelves were created by neatly lining up strips of Eyelet Outlet Book Tape. The computer generated sentiment (created with a free font called Bohemian Typewriter) leaves room for a trio of Book Brads and is matted on a panel of Wood Tape; Cactus and Heart Brads add extra texture and interest to this cozy little scene.

Here's a Handy Shopping List featuring all the items used to create this card:

Book Brads
Book Washi
Wood Tape
Cactus Brads
Heart Brads

Visit the Eyelet Outlet Store for an incredible selection of Brads, Tapes, Bling, Enamels, Flowers and so much more!