orange is the new pink... or possibly vice versa...?

this week's challenge at shopping our stash has a catchy title that somehow bizarrely stumped me for a good twenty four hours, so let me just tell you straight out: we just want to see projects which have BOTH orange and pink on them. it's really pretty easy. unless you're *me* lol! eventually, though, i got the hang of it, here's what i made:

background paper: basic grey; strips and scraps from: creative imaginations, fancy pants, sei, glitz design, prima, jenni bowlin, doodlebug and... well, they are all ancient and you won't find them again anyway, but luckily this idea works with ANY set of scraps you like! ancient sticky chipboard letters that weren't so sticky anymore (hence the stitching lol): american crafts; tiny flower: prima; tiny brad: sei; ink for edging: colorbox; adhesives: elmers tape runner, sewing machine

during ICAD this summer i became slightly obsessed with making quilt-like designs out of paper strips. to the point where i actually made up a card class at paper anthology mostly in order that i could keep doing so. it occurs to me that this type of card is the ULTIMATE expression of shopping one's stash, because even the tiniest, skinniest scraps can be used. which doesn't mean you have to save everything, all the time... but if you did happen to have some offcuts that were the last of a favorite paper which is no longer made, this is quite a nice way to use them up. ♥

there are lots more ideas for combining orange and pink over on the SOS blog. you should really head over there and see them!

in the pink!

Stephanie and I are still making PINK CHRISTMAS cards at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and donating $2 each to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for each card that's linked up with us this fortnight, so we'd love for you to not only make some cards, but also spread the word! Thanks very much for your help!

Here's what I made this week:

I've used a few more bits and bobs from the Sugar Plum collection by My Mind's Eye, including the stripey pink paper and that beautiful badge. I've mixed in some other items-- and some darker pink-- in the form of patterned paper strips, some oversized pink fabric poinsettias, and a small (ancient!) sentiment sticker that was serendipitously exactly right!

Hope over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see Stephanie's card and link up your own!

Washi + Flowers + Bling!

Everyone knows how much I love to wrap presents, especially for my nieces and nephews. So when my niece Lindsay Marie turned fifteen (15!!!) last week, I wanted to go big, which meant I needed ALL my favorite Eyelet Outlet embellishment categories: washi, flowers and bling!

I've mentioned before that I'm kind of... well... cheap, lol. So if I can buy plain giftbags inexpensively --or better yet-- if I can re-use a shopping bag, I'm a happy camper. In this case I started with a very pretty oversized bag from the New York Botanical Garden. It was exactly the right size and had that neat fern detail on the front and back. Unfortunately, it had the logo, too; in really large print. I tried putting ordinary washi over top, but the black typeface still showed through. Luckily, I had some glitter tape, which is very sparkly but not at all see-through. It also lets me avoid the wrath of Lindsay's father (my brother, Bill) who has declared glitter giftwrap and ribbon OFF LIMITS in his home, since he's only just now finally gotten all the carpets clean after last xmas' giftwrapping excesses.

I love to personalize presents. It is my belief that *everyone* secretly hopes the fanciest gift is for them, and that most of us totally get a kick from our name being on it! I recently found these beautiful, oversized, silver chipboard letters, and they looked good on top of the glitter tape, but my motto is: NEVER give up a chance to embellish!!! So I added a strip of Zigzag Purple tape and a fun Skinny Foil tape to each letter before adding them to the bag.

Lindsay's favorite color is purple (in case you hadn't guessed, lol!) so I finished off with some Purple Paper Flowers with purple Flower Jewels at their centers. I cut some older green flowers apart to serve as leaves, and finally added most of a package of clear Swirl Bling... cut apart and slightly re-arranged, in order to fit the space better. 

Just in case you were wondering what was *IN* the bag, it just so happens I crocheted a funky scarf that Lindsay really loved! (See, I told you her favorite color was purple!)

Don'f forget to drop by the Eyelet Outlet Blog for designer inspiration, every day! ♥

giving thanks

in honor of thanksgiving having been celebrated yesterday in canada, and only just over a month away here in the states, we are feeling especially thankful this week at shopping our stash. so we'd like to see cards that are either thanksgiving-themed OR, if you prefer, an ordinary thank you card will work. i went with the latter:

patterned paper: mme, basic grey, plus scraps of plain white; kraft cardstock: the paper cut; ephemera: the girls' paperie; diecut heart: k and co; chipboard letters: prima; florals: petaloo; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots

this card is chock full of absolutely ancient stash items! the floral chipboard letters for my youngest niece's 4th or 5th birthday (which... impossibly... is like 9 years ago!); the reproduction paris ephemera is from a packet i bought at an expo before we lived in this house (so... 5+ years on that?!); the 6x6 paper was a birthday gift last year or the year before; the velvet florals were leftover from an xmas card class in 2017 or 2016. i think the newest thing on this card is the kraft base, which was the last of a packet from this past winter. i love using up old stuff... especially when it's pretty things that i still really like! ♥

lots more inspiration is awaiting you at SOS, where i'm sure you will be as thankful for the inspiration as i am! 

♥PINK♥ xmas!

If you've played along with us in other years, you may already know that at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ we devote the first theme of each October to making pink holiday cards as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and that for each card that gets linked up, we each donate two dollars to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. There are really no rules for this challenge other than the fact that each card has to be newly made, it has to have a winter holiday theme and it has to feature PINK prominently. Does your whole card have to be pink? Certainly not. Can you combine other colors with the pink? Of course! Should you have more pink than say two or three baubles on your green tree set against a snowy white background? Well, yeah... that'd be good. :) But other than that, we'll leave it to you to decide how much pink, what shade, and how to employ it!

We're not generally huge on self-promotion at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ but this cause is near and dear to our hearts and we'd love to get GREAT participation, so be sure to tell all your cardmaking friends, and feel free to share the graphic and our link on your blog or social media. But now let's get right to the cardmaking! Here's what we've made this week:

Somewhat unusually for me, I not only used products which are nearly all from the same collection, I actually chose and purchased the collection specifically with Pink Xmas in mind. So you can see that my card has a lot of elements from "Sugar Plum" by My Mind's Eye, including patterned paper, a sentiment sticker and some cardstock diecuts. All of these are living happily together in a sort of landscape, completely with white glitter paper snow, obviously!

Be sure to hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see Stephanie's luscious pink card and get started planning your own!

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

The days are getting shorter and Halloween is getting closer, but there's still time to make and send cards... a job which is much easier with some creepy cute seasonal brads from Eyelet Outlet on hand! The brand new Ghosts are of course the stars of this year's Halloween season, but that doesn't mean that I should neglect my old favorites:

I was excited to find these cute potion bottle diecuts in a pack of Halloween goodies, they really inspired my whole card. The bottle with the eyeballs clearly needed some Small Eye Brads, but the others just had bubbling liquids, so I was able to get a bit creative. I will confess right now that the bottle of frogs, starring the adorable Frog Brads are my favorite thing on this card. Maybe even my favorite thing on ANY Halloween card I've ever made? I added Mini Spiders to one of the small jars and a full sized Spider Brad has clearly escaped from... somewhere... (*shiver*) I made my sentiment using a free font called "Sweet Hipster". A little cluster of purple clouds, positioned slightly behind the sentiment, with a pair of Bats completes the design.

I hope you will have as frightfully fun a time making your own Halloween cards as I did making mine! There's lots more inspiration each day on the Eyelet Outlet Blog. ♥

a pearl of a girl

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is a real pearl. no seriously! we'd like you to make a project inspired by this quote:

 

and now, here's my card:

background image is an older gel print on top of a collage of vintage paper with a donna downey poppies stencil as centerpiece; sewing pattern lady from an older sewing book, backed with a scrap of plain white cardstock and fussycut, adorned with tiny snips of an  eyelet outlet pearl flourish (the rest of which is an accent on the card); vintage lace from myu stash; scrap of hot pink cardstock as a mat; ancient sewing pattern paper from crate; plain white cardstock: staples; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape, sewing machine

i was inspired almost equally by the quote and the lady who said it. thinking about jackie kennedy, i decided an elegantly dressed vintage lady would be a nice starting point for my card. when i found this one, in a book with very creamy pages, i thought i'd probably make something fairly monochrome, in lots of shades of white. i tried out A LOT of different background ideas, from book pages, to patterned papers in every conceivable style. finally, while i was looking for something else entirely, i found this gel print, made last winter, on top of several taped-together vintage papers. it's definitely an offbeat choice, but as soon as i added it into the mix, the rest of the card came together almost immediately. i took the "pearls" part pretty literally, because i knew i had some lovely eyelet outlet pearl flourishes, in a few different colors. for a while, i was torn between bright white and dove grey, but eventually i settled on the cream.

be sure to check out all the other "pearls" of wisdom from the SOS design team! ♥