She's a Lady

You may already have guessed from the title that this fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we're making cards that feature a woman OR making cards for special women in our life. Which is excellent timing if you haven't quite finished making Mother's Day cards; but also flexible enough to cover lots of other situations too, such as colorful random collage cards with stickers, washi and Sewing Pattern Ladies!

In addition to some extremely elderly Jen Hadfield flower stickers, I've added ancient floral washi tape under that wide band of Pavilio White Lace Tape and used a set of turn-of-the-century Fancy Pants swirl stamps to add a little more color... which... admittedly is hard to see in the photo and it's fairly low-key irl too. That accounts for all of the "product" on these cards, but since I personally also have a HUGE supply of vintage paper, sheet music and trading stamps (the last is thanks to the amazing ninja thrifting skillz of Miss Stephanie!) so these genuinely are masterpieces of stash-shopping!

Head on over to Shopping Our Stash for more fabulous design team inspiration and a place to link your own "She's a Lady" creations.

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!

You may well have already guessed that Challenge #491 at Shopping Our Stash has a floral theme, which is handy because it saves me explaining and thus I can get right to my cards:

Not only is nearly everything on both of these cards about ten years old, I have cut into my LAST piece of Basic Grey "Marzipan" paper (with the roses) which I have hoarded with Golem-like intensity for about a decade, lol. It kind of helps that I have pretty much used it one flower at a time... it's not that I didn't like the soft purple background, I just always think the roses look cool in a collage, so that's what I made.

The first card features three roses that were at the edges of the page, so I went with that. I've put them at the edge of a collage of torn vintage paper topped with Pavilio's gorgeous White Lace Tape (a leftover from The Ink Pad) with a little bit of Spun Sugar Distress Oxide added on using the tape as a resist. The background mat is from BG's Out of Print collection (now even more aptly named, alas). The sequins are from Fun Stamper's Journey and leftover from a class at Paper Anthology.

The second card has just one freestanding rose, layered over another vintage collage. This one's topped with super-cool translucent postage stickers that my craft bestie, Stephanie, gifted me; they're Matchbox Stickers from an asian company called Candy Poetry and I adore them. The round white sequins are from Eyelet Outlet and probably the only thing on either card that you could still purchase, lol!

Be sure to visit SOS to see what the rest of the Crew have come up with, then start planning your own card for, "Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere"!

WTHeck Embellishments

This fortnight at Shopping Our Stash we have an especially interesting challenge: we want you to search through your embellishment stash and find something that makes you think, "WHY the Heck did I acquire this??!" And then... (here's the tricky part!) ...use it on a card or project! 

Thanks to Paper Anthology's Annual Papercrafters' Garage Sale, many of my most puzzling items have already crossed the crafty rainbow bridge, but I did find a this plastic sorter* full of metal shapes, tags, keys, tiny frames, bookplates, miscellaneous hardware and enough charms to make a Victorian lady swoon. Plus... some strange but beautiful embossed metal stickers, whose origins completely elude me. I expected the adhesive to be long gone, but no, the backers peeled right off and they stuck magnificently well to my funky collage of torn vintage paper and white lace tape. I added machine stitching, a scatter of Eyelet Outlet Sequins and a gel print mat that my friend Gina made and declared my A7 card fini! I have to say that I didn't expect to create ANYTHING remotely interesting for this challenge, but now I'm slightly wondering, "Why the Heck didn't I buy more of these??!" 

I hope you'll visit SOS to see the other designers' WTHeck items and cards (it's well worth the trip, I assure you!) and then start delving into the weirder side of your stash to play along!

*Having discovered said sorter, OF COURSE I promptly dropped it, broke the lid, and spent twenty minutes retrieving tiny metal things from the floor of my art lair; which is why everything is now arranged kinda neatly... sigh... 

TN Update

My friend and fellow SOS Alum, Mary Juska (aka Mimi, She's Crafty) is one of the most talented stamp carvers I've ever seen. I am constantly admiring her carves on her Instagram account, @MillwoodStudioArt and last week she sent me some of her winged designs stamped on library cards. I'd love to tell you I'm making them into gorgeous cards to send my friends, but mostly I plan to hoard them and use them for art journaling. To that end, I made this quick collagey-page: 

Here's a closeup, just because. I added torn vintage paper to the background, as well as a strip of White Lace Tape, which I dabbed with Spun Sugar Distress Ink (since the tape is made of very thin, slightly shiny plastic, the ink "sticks" to the paper behind, without tinting the tape). But really the stamps are the stars:

As long as my Traveler's Notebook was in photography mode, I snapped a pic of the March page in my 2022 Monthly Insert. I like being able to look back on all my papercrafting projects for the month.

It is quite a dull grey and rainy Sunday here in central NJ, so I think I will go and make something COLORFUL!!! ♥

Another New Year, Another New Journal

One of the most exciting things about the New Year for planners and journal-keepers is choosing and setting up our new book, supplies and system. Last year was my first time using a Traveler's Notebookfrom The Ink Pad (details from last January are HERE) and since my experience was 100% positive, I'll be going down that same path, using dated 2021 Traveler's Company Products.

Last year I purchased and decorated a Refill Binder, as opposed to a Leather Cover, since I knew most of my journal-keeping would take place at home. I added collage papers and stickers to the front and back covers. Since I had the intention of re-using the same cover in subsequent years, I confined my references to the year 2020 to a catalog card which slid into a library pocket. So this year, all I had to do was remove the 2020 card and my completed (and now rather fat, lol) weekly and monthly refills, archive them, and decorate a new card for 2021. I used some Pepin Vintage Fashion Stickers, MT Fab Letters Tapeand the stickers that came with my new TN. 

This year I'll be working with a 2021Weekly Vertical + Memo(which splits the year into two halves)and a 2021 Dated Monthly Diary. I treated myself to the 2021 Customizing Sticker Set(this year's theme is classic books) and a Brass Bookmark Template.

To kick off the year, I decorated the front cover of the January-June Weekly book, again with some of the stickers that came with my TN, more Pepin Vintage Fashion, beautiful White Lace Gem Tape, some letters cut from MT Fab Letters Tape, and various stickers and tapes from Pepin's Natural History, Art Forms in Natureand Classical European Tilesbooks. (There are quite a few other books in this Pepin seriesand with thirty-two 8x10" pages these are a good value as well as being both useful and beautiful!)

Since January first fell mid-week, my first layout spans the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. I did a little hand-lettering with my Karin Decobrush pensand made a little collage featuring some vintage bookpaper, sheet music, a fabulous quote (written out on my trusty Royal typewriter)and various Pepin Stickers, some of which I fussycut.

I use my Monthly Diary not to plan forward, but record my projects and assignments once they are completed. So my month of January isn't filled in yet, but I added a little more lettering, as well as more Pepin tapes and stickers.

There are so many different ways to use a Traveler's Notebook, many of which do not involve a calendar or dated pages at all! Did you know there are Gridded Refills, Kraft, Sketchbookpages, Watercolor Refillsand more. And most of these varieties also come in the handy Passport Size (which is, as the name implies, literally the size of your passport)as well as the larger Regular Size (4x 8"ish) that I have chosen! Visit the website or better yet, the Chelsea store to see the whole selection and be sure to check out the TN Master Blog Post for an overview of the basics!

It's Not Just for Traveling

It's tempting to argue that 2020 is the year in which we needed calendars and planners the least, but I to the contrary, I've found I've used and worked in my Traveler's Notebook from The Ink Pad more than ever. Because it's a system that you can customize to work perfectly for your life! For example, did you know that there are many TN refill options that don't even involve a calendar? Such as Sketchbook, Watercolor, Gridded and Kraft Paper inserts that turn your TN into a portable sketchbook, art journal, or creative writing habitat. The Traveler's Notebook Master Blog Post from the end of September lays out all of the basics about sizes, refills and covers; you might like to check it out if you're thinking about jumping into the TN universe. Meanwhile, I've got these three brand new pages on TIP Blog today!

Playing the Accordion

 ...or at least, playing around with the idea of accordion-folded minibooks. The Ink Pad had the very great pleasure to participate in the Collins Virtual Show last week, and we were blown away by all the classes, teachers, ideas and new products! We'll have lots of the latter coming soon to the store, so stay tuned for sneak peeks! In the meantime, many of the ideas we saw inspired us to use our existing inventory in new and interesting ways. For example, Pinkfresh Studios hosted a class in which we made adorable mini albums just by scoring and folding a page of journaling cards! Genius, right? Well, what if we translated that idea and used hand-stamped and collaged paper, to make a project that's more than a card, but less than an album? Read all about it on The Ink Pad Blog!

What Can You *DO* with All of Those Small Stickers?

Because if you're anything like me, you fall in love with beautiful, artful, must-have stickers like these Ukiyo-E Japanese Scenes from The Ink Pad; then wonder how you'll use them to fill an entire A2 card. Well, there are a couple of ideas on TIP Blog today, I'd love for you to hop over and check them out!