Gift Wrap Wrap-Up

I've said it before and no doubt I'll say it again, but here it is now: Papercrafting supplies are AWESOME for wrapping gifts! Washi tape, journal cards, scraps of patterned paper or wrapping paper, ribbon, florals, chipboard shapes... they are all outstanding items to make your gifts truly unique!

(There's a tutorial for these Dylusions Dyamond Board ornaments on the Ranger Project Page!)

Brown Baggin' It

Papercrafting supplies... especially washi tape... are awesome for giftwrapping! Especially for fancying up and customizing plain bags from the big box store. 

For this pair of bags I incorporated a fabulous collage concept from one of my favorite designers, Katie Pertiet, who made Christmas tree cards by diecutting her trees from a collage of her beautiful 49 and Market tickets and ephemera. I loved this idea so much that I had to try it RIGHT NOW. There's a terrific video of Katie's process on her Instagram feed, so I won't go into a lot of detail. But I will mention that since I traced a couple of Dylusions Dyamond Board Small Trees instead of diecutting, I took the time to cut out one of each tree shape from a rectangle of scrap cardstock, and I used that as a frame to help me lay out my collage of vintage postage and tickets. I also used up a bunch of tiny leftover border and label stickers.

I have a lot of washi tape, so I often use it for backgrounds, as I've done here. You could use paper scraps or ribbons in the same way, though. 

I made a second, smaller collage of yellow postage and trading stamps, from which I diecut some happy little stars to surround the trees.

If you're looking for a last-minute card or giftwrap idea, this one is HIGHLY recommended! Thank you, Katie P!

Holiday Cheer is IN THE BAG!

Or, in this case, holiday cheer is in a pair of (formerly) plain white gift bags, adorned with Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape, Glitter Tape, Bling and Brads!

On the red and green bag we have: Christmas Jolly Holly Washi, Red Stripe Foil Tape, Santa Washi, Glitter Red Tape, Ho Ho Washi, and snowflake diecuts held on with large and small red Jewel Brads. Santa and Mrs. Claus are standing by to supervise the presentation of this gift!

The blue and silver bag is embellished with: Glitter Winter Tape, multiple strips of Glitter Silver Tape, sprinkled with 2" Snowflake Bling and 1.5" Snowflake Bling and the snowflakes are attached with large and small White Pearl Brads.

Every bag, box, card or package you need to decorate this holiday season will find the best choice of embellishments at Eyelet Outlet!

Lauren Bergold

loves wrapping Christmas gifts!

Blog * Instagram * Facebook

Seashore Garden Gift Set

Eyelet Outlet Brads, Washi Tape, Flowers and Bling are ideal for making cards and so much more! This gift set features Seashore Garden Washi Tape, Glitter Gold Tape, White Paper Flowers, Swirl Bling, Pearl Brads and more.

The square card also sports Sea Shore Brads, Shell Brads, Shell Corners and a yellow Pearl Swirl.

The rectangular card has all three sizes of white Paper Flowers held on with large (12mm) gold-edged purple Pearl Brads and accented with Swirl Bling in champagne. 

Whatever theme, style, colors or mood you're considering for your next card or project, Eyelet Outlet has all the embellishments you need!

Lauren Bergold

is dreaming of the beach!

Blog * Instagram * Facebook 

NOT Just for Cards!

Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape, Paper Flowers and Brads, that is. You can also use them to make customized gift bags, like this one. Just cover plain white cardstock with neat strips of tape (this variety is Happy Birthday Foil Washi)... print out an initial in your favorite font (this one's called Chicken Pie and was free on dafont.com)... trace and cut. Embellish with a few shades and sizes of Solid Color Paper Flowers held on with Candle, Party Hat and Cupcake or Cupcake Swirl Brads. For even more color and pizazz, diecut hearts from a coordinating tape, like Pink Checked Washi and use one repeat of the Birthday Tape to create your sentiment strip. Scatter a few Round Sequins and you're good to go. And yes, all of the above looks pretty good on a matching birthday card, as well!  

There are brads, tapes, flowers, sequins, bling and more for every style, theme or occasion you can possibly imagine in the EO Store... you should probably check that out!

Five Favorites: Wendy Vecchi

Every December I love reading "Favorites" posts on blogs and social media... you know, when people do a round up of the projects they loved most during the year. I always think to myself, "Someday I'm gonna do that!" and it looks like this might be the year! In honor of the fact that yesterday was Wendy Vecchi's birthday, I think I'll start with my favorite Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART projects... in more or less chronological order. (Click the links below each photo to see the original posts with all of the specific product details.)

Lucky Clover Card

The brilliant "seeds" of this came from Patti Behan at Ranger, who suggested using the hearts from Wendy's Merci and More Stamp, Die and Stencil set to make four-leafed clovers for a tutorial that ran on St. Patrick's Day. I wouldn't have thought of it, but once she said it, I was wholeheartedly ON BOARD! 

Moody Blue Mandala Monday

Not an official Wendy project, and it only uses a fraction of her Designer Series Archival Inks, but I really love this mandala, so it's IN!

Tropical Grunge ATC's

Wendy's three newest Archival shades --Rosey Posey, Peachy Keen and Morning Glory-- came out in June and I was instantly obsessed. I love everything I made for the release, but these funky, grungy, ink-over-collage ATC's miiiiiight be my favorite. 

Doodle Bird Garden Card

Another awesome suggestion from Patti, could I make a NON-holiday card using Wendy's Christmas in July release stamp sets, Doodle Christmas and Doodle Holiday. Yes. Yes, I could! 

(My favorite part? The flowers are the ornament cluster from Doodle Christmas, stamped upside down!) 

Gal-O-Ween Treat Bags

Did you know that the shopping bag stamp from the Let's Shop Stamp, Die and Stencil set has a coordinating die that lets you make gift-card-sized  DIMENSIONAL giftbags? Brilliant or what??! 

Holiday Gift Wrap Set

Ok, yeah, technically this is number six out of five, but I looooooove wrapping gifts; I really love using my papercrafting supplies to decorate them; and I especially love how Wendy's Doodle stamps, as well as her Chippies and Washi Tape Assortments combined to make this set super-festive!

♥♥♥

Just a reminder that the Ranger Blog, Project Page and IG Account are amazing sources of inspiration and ideas for using ALL of the wonderful Ranger projects. Also, Wendy Vecchi's Instagram is entirely awesome (be sure to check out Tip Tuesday each week!) and the MAKE ART with Wendy Vecchi FaceBook group is a super-fun place to hang out!

Holiday Style is in the Bag!

 Or rather, it's ON the bag! And, for that matter, other surface you'd like to decorate; because Eyelet Outlet brads and washi tape are wonderful for adding a festive holiday vibe to so much more than just cards! Like, for example, this plain white bag from the big box store:

To make your own custom washi tape diecuts, just line strips of your favorite tape up neatly on scraps of plain white cardstock and diecut as usual. These chunky letters feature, from left to right, Red Santa Washi, Vertical Tree Tape, Poinsettia Tape and vertically oriented Heart Tape. By choosing tapes with similar colors, they mix nicely; if you'd like more variety, add other shades. On top of the letters, we have some festive brads, including: Santa and Mrs. Claus, a Snowy Tree, a Poinsettia, a Holly Brad and a Snowman. To marry the letters to the bag I created a border by adding five strips of Garland Washi, flanked at the top and bottom by Glitter Green Skinny Tape. I carried all the tapes around to the sides of the bag and trimmed them neatly inside the crease. A bow... with a Candy Cane Brad... and a bit of red tissue paper, and this plain jane white bag is now a lovely customized gift! Instead of a holiday sentiment, you could adorn a big with washi tape initials or names; or use any of your favorite holiday shaped dies like ornaments, trees or even reindeer!

 

The Eyelet Outlet Store has brads, tapes, bling, enamels and sequins for literally ANY occasion you'd care to celebrate!

Wendy Vecchi Holiday Gift Wrap

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is the chance to be a Wrap Star, lol! Partly because a beautiful presentation makes a gift even more special; but also... I just really love using my stamps, inks, tapes and embellies to decorate boxes and bags. If you head over to the Ranger Blog, you can follow along, step-by-step, as I use Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamps, Chippies and Washi Tape to turn plain jane bags and boxes from the discount store into the prettiest presents under the tree!

BIG Initials!

One of the easiest ways that I (Lauren) have found to quickly customize a plain store-bought gift bag is with giant initials, covered in Eyelet Outlet Washi Tape of which... fortunately... I happen to have quite a bit! I've also got some fun Enamel Hearts and Stars, which I've scattered around the bags for even more texture and interest.

It seems counter-intuitive to start with the tape rather than the initial, but in fact, that's sort of what I did. I did size and print my initials on plain white cardstock first, but... I didn't cut them out. Instead, I took my 4x6" outline letters (the font is called Storybook) and stapled them to 5x7" pieces of cardstock covered in neat strips of washi. Then, I cut them out!

Between my three initials, I've used about three dozen different tape styles, and I'll name and link a bunch of those in a minute, but really... this idea will work with ANY combination of tapes you like! You can organize them by color, as I have here; or by theme, or in rainbow order, or create patterns with the tape or... well, this is quite a flexible method and thus perfect for making the initials as unique as their recipients! I adhered my finished initials to some solid cardstock to create a skinny outline, then added some of the same tapes to each bag to complete the design.

And now here's a fairly thorough list of the tapes I used, from top to bottom, for each letter!

Letter K: Flower Washi, Pink Foiled Rose, Skinny Calendar Tape, Unicorn Washi, Zigzag, Pink Checked, Macaron, more Skinny Calendar (the set has three different styles), wide Funky Bird Tape, Heart Tape from the Valentine set, Tiny Hearts, the third of the Skinny Calendar Tapes and Pink + White Dots.

Letter R: Star Tape, Owl Washi, Script Tape, Skinny XO Foil Tape, XO Washi which is sadly out of print, Foiled Silver Dots, Antique Car Tape, Tire Tracks, Road Tape, Wood Washi, Music Keyboard Tape and a repeat of XO, Script and Stars.

Letter S: Cloud Washi, Skinny Tape, Purple Zigzag, Rainbow Tape, Purple Checked, Skinny Calendar Tape, Purple Gingham Check and Purple/Green Stripe Tape have, alas, gone; Llama Washi, More Clouds, Foiled Flower Tape and finally Purple Dots and Japanese Tape are also out of print, but... You can see the entire (huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!) selection of Eyelet Outlet Washi, just by clicking this link!

Lauren Bergold

has quiiiiiite a bit of

EO Tape!!!

Everyone Loves Gift Cards!

Of course, one can enclose a gift card in ANY handmade card and it will be awesome, but at Jingle Belles, we like to raise the bar a little bit more, so this fortnight we're making cards that have a purpose-built pocket or window that can contain a gift card; OR a specialty box or envelope intended for the same purpose. There are lots of dies and templates on the market, or you can decorate a store-bought item. Here's what I made:

I confess I incline to the "little box of some sort" school of thought when it comes to gift cards because it just looks so much more substantial. I saved and dissected a little pillowbox that came with skincare samples in it, traced the shape onto some pretty Ciao Bella patterned paper from Paper Anthology, then cut, scored, folded and embellished it.

I made a gift card folder to hold the actual g/c, sized to fit inside the pillow box, and decorated both items with diecuts, silk flowers, ribbon, jewel brads and a little bit of sparkly washi tape.

Be sure to visit Jingle Belles and see Stephanie's awesome project, then start planning what you will link up with us this fortnight!

It's in the Bag!

I love giving super-fancy presents to my friends and family for holidays and birthdays, but I definitely don't like paying fancy prices for giftwrap and bags; especially when I have lots of lovely Eyelet Outlet Bling and Washi Tape to make my gifts stand out! 

For these gifts I wanted a really elegant winter and festive feeling, without embracing any particular holiday, so I went with lots of blue, silver and white. I used Glitter Winter Washi on my first bag, and surrounded it with Glitter Silver Star Tape plus Silver Foil Skinny Tape. My diecut snowflakes are topped with 1 1/2" Snowflake Bling and Bumpy Heart Bling and I've scattered some Blue Pearl Bling and Snowflake Sequins around for good measure. My second design features Glitter Tall Tree Tape surrounded by White Foil and Twig Tape. 

Whatever colors, themes and holidays you love, I bet there are Eyelet Outlet Brads, Bling, Tapes and Sequins to make your gifts as beautifully individual as you are! ♥

No Time Like the Presents

I only buy plain, undecorated, giftbags at the big box store. Because I know I can make them unique and fancy with my Eyelet Outlet Goodies! I made this set for my mom's birthday. She loves backyard birdwatching, her beautiful garden, and she's very fond of bling!

I added strips of Bird Tape alternating with Peonies Shimmer Tape, Bird and Flower Tape, accented with Skinny Pink Glitter Tape. I ran each strip neatly around to the side and tucked it into the fold; although a nice thing about rolls of washi tape is that you can actually run your tape all the way around the bag and make a continuous design. (It's still a good idea to start and end in the side fold, however!) I added white Paper Flowers with Pearl Brad and Jewel Brad centers and snipped apart some green Paper Flowers to serve as leaves. Finally I scattered a few hot pink Sequins around for extra sparkle.

If you're going to make a giftbag as fancy as this, you really need to go all the way and make a matching card, right? I used all of the same tapes and embellies as on the bag; just simplified them a bit to fit a smaller, 6" square shape. I did add a sweet bird from our Bluebird and Robin set to the center of my flower stack, too.

I hope you'll be inspired to use your Eyelet Outlet Embellishments to make your own custom gift bags; I know your recipients will love the results!

SOS 413: My Heart's On Fire

There are a few ways to interpret this fortnight's challenge at Shopping Our Stash. For "My Heart's On Fire" you can make a card or other project which incorporates a) Hearts b) the color RED c) Valentines d) Fire or e) Any combination thereof. I went with a and b, in gift bag form.

I have probably said this a million times but apparently I'm still going to say it again: I never buy decorated gift bags. It's not that I don't like them, but for the most part I feel they're over-priced and under-personal. So I buy bulk packs of plain ones at the big box store and decorate them myself. One of my favorite combinations of supplies for this is washi tape + dimensional flowers + brads. And bearing in mind the axiom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" that's what I've utilized here. I basically grabbed ALL of my red and/or heart-bedecked tapes and went to town. The velvetty flowers came from a stem acquired in the floral department of a craft store long enough ago that I had to use packing tape to de-dust them. The paper flowers are annnnnnnnnnnnnnnncient Prima. The brads are a mishmash of older, out of print Eyelet Outlets ones; the tapes are from... well... everywhere, lol! In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that when I use tapes of unknown origin on a project like this, I wrap them around neatly into the crease at the side of the bag, try to trim them all pretty neatly into a straight(ish) line, and finish off with a small strip of clear packing tape, just in case any decide they might like to unstick themselves at some later date.

Why not treat yourself to the gift of inspiration over at SOS and then start planning your own masterpiece?

un-be-LEAF-able!

this fortnight's challenge at shopping our stash is called "pumpkin spice season" but you don't actually need to include a pumpkin, unless you'd like to. really we're just going for an autumnal vibe. having always lived in the northeastern united states, to me that means beautiful foliage!

plain brown gift bag from the big box store; colorful leaves made by: sprinkling miscellaneous book and music paper with autumnal shades of colorburst (burnt orange, cadmium red, yellow ochre, olive green and sepia are some good choices) spritzing with water and allowing them to dry completely... then diecutting with tim holtz/sizzix "tattered foliage"; scraps of autumnal cardstock used for the solid leaves are mostly core'dinations with a bit of bazzill; ancient white paper flowers which could be prima but i think are wannabees; pearl brads and pearl swirl bling: eyelet outlet; ink for edging: frayed burlap and tea dye distress ink; adhesives: elmers brand tape runner and nuvo deluxe adhesive 

i had a couple of potentially cool card ideas, but once again the thing i realized i needed RIGHT NOW was a fancy giftbag. this is somewhat of a "recycled" idea, as i made giftbags with similarly colorburst-ed vintage paper leaves and little white flowers a couple of years ago for a class at paper anthology. but honestly i do not believe that there is any combination of these ingredients i would not enjoy, and who's to say we have to reinvent the wheel every time out? i've attached each of my colorful, diecut paper leaves to a solid cardstock version, to act as a sort of "drop shadow". i've inked the edges of absolutely everything (except the flowers) and added bits of eyelet outlet pearl swirl bling in a beautiful shade of golden yellow that i'm pretty sure we no longer sell. the most finicky part of this entire project was that i attached the little flowers to the bag with my eyelet outlet pearl brads, instead of just setting the brads in the flowers and attaching the whole thing with beacon's 3-in-1 adhesive. ah well, they look nice and you can sort of twirl them around a bit, i'm sure that will come in handy, lol...

there's more gorgeous autumn goodness for you to FALL for (hahaha... ok, sorry...) over at SOS, i hope you'll stop by and enjoy that, darlings. ♥

(sorry about the earworm)

this fortnight at shopping our stash we proudly present "The Embossible Dream" for which we'd like to see... (do i even have to spell it out?) ...projects which feature heat embossing, pressure embossing or embossing paste. i unearthed a bunch of sadly neglected embossing folders for this one and got to work:

plain brown gift bag from the big box store; silver metallic hvac tape from the home supply store; embossing folders: cuttle bug, darice, taylored expressions, sizzix; patterned paper: graphic45; wide washi: eyelet outlet; ink on edges of metallic letters: a copic marker; plain white cardstock: staples; adhesives: elmers brand tape runner, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape

i had a couple of really colorful and *pretty* card ideas involving embossing folders, wax resist and colorburst! but when it came down to it, the thing i needed to make on this particular night was a gift bag for nephew matthew's 12th birthday, so i downshifted into masculine mode instead. i adhered very thin, very sticky silver metallic tape from the hardware store (it's like duct tape, but made specially for high temps) to two layers of scrap cardstock, cut it into my letter shapes, then embossed, using a different folder for each letter. this was quite easy to do, but nearly impossible to photograph well, so please forgive the only ok pics, lol.

i actually had all of my letters cut out and stuck on the strip of torn patterned paper i affixed to my plain kraft bag, when i realized that their metallic/reflective surface made them blend in a bit too well to my understated background. so i went back and UNSTUCK each letter, affixed it to another layer of plain white cardstock and cut around, so they were matted and showed up better. this took longer than all the other steps combined, but was worth it in the end.

there are lots more "embossible dreams" awaiting you courtesy of the design team darlings at SOS. i hope you'll head over there and enjoy the inspiration!♥

Revved Up Gift Set

It is a fact, universally acknowledged, that masculine cards and gifts are harder to make than those with a feminine theme. Or maybe I'm the only one who used to think so? But thanks to Eyelet Outlet I'm now definitely an Equal Opportunity Embellisher. For this gift set, I combined lots of EO Gear Brads, Compasses, Anodized Stars and manly washi tapes with papers from Prima Marketing's "Craftsman" collection. I think it's a bit of a match made in heaven!

I made the bag first. I added a nice thick band alternating layers of torn paper and Brick Tape, Circuit Tape, Map Tape, Road Tape, and Wheels Tape; but really ANY combination of tapes which work well together would be equally good. I adorned the picture wheel with tiny 1/16" Round Brads in gold, and added some old-school Brushed Brass Eyelets to the corners of the label shape. Finally I added the fabulous vintage car (snipped from an old falling apart book I got at a garage sale) and a few Anodized Stars. The extra eagle-eyed will notice that in with the gears I've slipped a few Film Cans from our Movie Brads and Faucet Valves from the Pipe Brad Set; because they both look like they belong, and you don't always have to just use things the way they were originally intended! ;)

When it came to making the card, I basically made a pared down version of the same design, but I added a sentiment. It's a combination of small foam letter stickers and my own larger diecut alphas, made from cardstock covered with Map Tape! The background again uses the Map Tape, Brick Tape and Circuit Tape and I've thrown in another Compass and some Anodized Stars.

When it comes to creative embellishing, Eyelet Outlet *always* has your back!

it's a wrap!

i loooooove wrapping gifts. i may have mentioned that, lol. here are my three favorite tricks for making extra fancy presents that don't "get wrecked" when you open them. because yeah... in the past, i've had people just flatly refuse to open their gifts, lol. 

trick number one is everyone's favorite, the trusty giftbag. the only drawback with giftbags is that the fancy ones cost a fortune, but the plain ones are... well... plain! so i've dressed this one up with some handcut paper ruffles from one of my favorite recent prima marketing lines, georgia blues. once the ruffles were attached (i made them 12" wide, so the ends could tuck neatly into the folds at the side of the bag) i added a couple of doily scraps, some ancient prima pearl flourishes and a gorgeous paper and vellum butterfly that is also from the georgia blues collection.

my second trick is to buy --or better yet re-purpose-- a little box with a lid, then cover the box and lid separately with giftwrap or with fancy patterned paper. in this case, it's some beloved and shimmery hambly paper. i use gluestick or nuvo deluxe adhesive to adhere the paper neatly, without bubbles or wrinkles. for this little box (which contains earrings for my cousin kerrie) i used a black damask pattern for the bottom of the box and a white doily print for the top, and the "appliqued" hearts on each side. i like to decorate the envelopes of my cards as well. this one has some oversized alphabet stickers, in the initials of my recipient.

my last trick might be the hardest to spot, because it kind of looks like i wrapped this pair of fancy candy bars in the traditional way, right?

but no... i've just made a sheath that wraps around the bars, leaving the ends open, so it can easily be slid off like this:

this one is made from a vintage map, which i've decorated with a fussy cut vintage car, and topped with a bow made from measuring tape twill. this time i did some handlettering on the envelope, using a vivid blue tombow dualbrush pen. i will tell you my two favorite tricks, that immediately make your lettering look very cool: #1. outline your handwriting! you can go all the way around every letter OR just choose a "plane" as i have done here, by outlining only the right side of every vertical line. trick #2: add a shadow to one side of your letters, it can be to the left or right, top or bottom, just be consistent. et voila! you've instantly got 3-D text!

and that concludes the spring birthday edition of the giftwrap chronicles. my only regret is that i didn't save one of those candy bars for myself... oh well...  ♥