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!)

Build-a-Plaid Bags

Wendy Vecchi's NOT Your Ordinary Card Collection from Spellbinders is entirely awesome, but if I had to pick just *one* element that I love the very most, it miiiiiight be the Build-a-Plaid Layered Stencil Set. Mostly because it is SO fun to use and you can make a different design every single time! Or in this case two similar but different designs:

I've used my favorite holiday-centric Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks from Ranger to create one bold holiday plaid in green, and one in red. I used the Christmas Add-On Stamp and Die Set to make layered poinsettias in coordinating colors and accented them with foliage from the set. Fancy ribbon tied to the bags' handles completes the design, while spreading cheer... and, alas, tiny showers of golden glitter... all over the land! :)

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!

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!

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! ♥

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...  ♥

Monograms Are Always a Good Idea

Or, in this case, technically we've got initials. R,L, J and M to be specific. The initials of my four beautiful nieces, Riley, Lindsay, Jillian and Maddie. We are lucky enough, most years, to celebrate Christmas together, on the 25th. Which means I'm wrapping presents in bulk, and potentially in a bit of a hurry, lol. Even so... I still don't really like to "mass produce" anything. So my strategy is to formulate *one* design and then personalize each version. Fancy initials are really great for that, and as a bonus you don't even need tags! This year I grabbed my favorite holiday collection: Santa Baby, from Prima Marketing and got to work.

The number one question I get about initials and monograms? "Where do you find fancy letter templates?" The answer is: my computer- and yours- is FULL of them. Set up a word document to the size you need (mine are approximately 6.5 x 8.5") then scroll through your fonts, find a style you like, and format the initial to fill the space*. In this case I've got a free font called "Storybook" which has nice chunky letters with some interesting curves. I print them as outline only, on plain paper. Then staple them to the patterned papers I want to use for each one, and cut out around the outlines. Easy, peasy!

Once you have nice big initials, it's time for the fun part: embellishing!!! Again, I take a basic recipe and sort of adapt it to each one. My basic set of supplies here is: paper doilies; hearts diecut from bright white sheet music backed with plain cardstock; Prima flowers and butterflies (from a few different collections over the years) in shades of white, cream and pink; Chipboard and diecuts from the Santa Baby collection and bright white sticky-back pearls.

Placement is more or less determined by the elements on the base paper initials. For example, I managed to incorporate the beautiful Santa face on the "Grand Christmas Exhibition" paper into the right hand side of the J... so that was obviously going to be my focal point. I added the "bright" chipboard to that side, and the pretty bird and flowers to the hook of the J. Then I "connected" those areas using doilies, flower clusters and pearls.

With some careful cutting, I was able to get both the Santa from the lower left of the "Santa Baby" paper and the cluster of birds and flowers from the upper right of the same sheet! Which worked perfectly for the L and R, respectively. Unfortunately, I sort of decapitated (?!) one of the birds on the R. So my butterfly and flower embellishments were placed quite... ummmm... strategically, lol. 

I thought the M, which is cut from the stripey "Let it Snow" paper would need the least  embellishments, because it has the most different patterns and elements on it. But it turned out to need the most, actually. Which just goes to show that planning is a great idea, but you still have to be ready to roll with the punches as a project comes together.

Since the first three bags each had a Santa, I used the cardstock diecut one on the M, and clustered most of the flowers and embellies at the lower part of the letter, to sort of ground it.

Of course, pretty bags look nice on their own, but what you really need at the end of a post, is a group of beautiful supermodels to show off your work. Luckily, I have one right here!

I hope the rest of your Christmas week will be a relaxing and happy one! 

♥♥♥

*My top tip on choosing fonts for more than one initial: make sure that ALL the letters you need will look nice in that style. For example, when printing capital R, L, J and M, it's sometimes hard to find a font where the L is at all interesting. A fact I have occasionally found out AFTER printing the R, J and M. So now I preview each one before I commit! ;)

Santa Baby... times two!

I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned how much I love Prima's "Santa Baby" collection, but it bears repeating. And not just because it has a vintage vibe and loads of pink. Though obviously both of those factors are 100% fine with me, lol. Here are a couple of gift bags I made with a selection of the papers... a few bits and bobs of my own and one or two patterns from this summer's "Havana" collection, mixed in:

My biggest problem was deciding which papers to use first, so I sort of just bypassed that whole question by using almost all of them! Since I was making bags for two friends I would be seeing together, I wanted to make two designs that were similar, but unique. So I leaned towards the pink on the first, and picked up the soft turquoise accent color (and some of the metallic gold) for the second bag.

I handcut some very loose, funky ruffles, distressed and curled the edges a bit, added a little machine stitching, then layered them onto the fronts of two plain white bags from the big box store. I worked from the middle of the bag, upwards. I used thin strips of foam tape towards the center of the bags for extra dimension, and Sookwang's extra strong Scor-Tape to anchor the edges firmly in the folds at the side of the bags.

I can never quite resist adding in a little vintage paper... especially sheet music... especially at the holidays! And yes, I have a hardcore love of paper doilies, what can I say? The burlap flowers and gorgeous pink holly leaves at the top are older Prima products, but honestly, it's like they were made especially to coordinate with the tiny flowers from the Santa Baby line. Of course, if you've got bags as fancy as this, they really ought to have matching cards, right?

More doilies, holding sentiments built from my own diecut letters. These are made from vintage sheet music mounted on thin chipboard, to make them extra sturdy. I like to use a mix of sheet music colors and styles to compliment the fun, funky font and add even more vintage charm.

A mix of trimmings, flowers and foliage also bumps up the texture factor. Because seeing as how these will be tucked into the gift bags, there is no need to think about mailability! ;)

Of course the very best place for presents of any kind is underneath the tree, right?! 

I hope this Saturday before the Saturday before Christmas will find you finishing up lots of "to do list" items, but also making time for some holiday fun --and treats-- for yourself! ♥♥♥

Death Before Decaf!*

It's that wonderful time of year once again: by which I mean both the holiday season AND the winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop! Thus I decided to make some giftcard holders that combine my love of coffee, holiday cardmaking and Eyelet Outlet Coffee Brads and Coffee Stamps!

I made a very simple folder; it's just a piece of 3.5 x 8.5" kraft cardstock scored at the 2.5 and 6.5" point, to create a little pocket inside which can hold a giftcard OR a check, money, a little note, even some small photos. You could make these out of double sided patterned paper to save having to trim little panels to decorate the outside, but I always seem to have loads of little patterned paper off-cuts and this is a great way to use them up! 

Once I'd covered the pocket, top flap and back panel with cardstock, it was time for the fun part: decorating! I covered a small scrap of white cardstock with Eyelet Outlet Merry Christmas Tape and diecut it into a heart which is slightly narrower than the top flap, but hangs down a bit over the pocket area. This hides the place where I secured seambinding to the front, but still leaves room for the bow that literally ties the whole thing together. I used my Stephanie Barnard dies to create the coffee cup out of lighter kraft and the lid and front panel from this fun argyle-inspired Christmas Pattern Washi. I added a green Paper Flower, anchored with a Wreath Brad, decorated with some tiny red Pearl Bling berries.

In the second version, I decided to get a bit more coffee-centric, so I stamped the coffee bean from our Coffee Stamp Set in an all-over pattern and used a brown Tombow with a water brush to add color. This time my diecut heart has vertical-oriented Red Tree Washi and the cup is adorned with Santa Tape flanked by Skinny Stripes. And to hold on the flowers, one those awesome beans from the Coffee Brad Set which also contains both red and white coffee cups!

Be sure to hop over and see all the amazing cards at the Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop, and leave a little love for Amy Tsuruta and the other Coffee Elves who are working so hard behind the scenes at these events! ♥♥♥

*ok, not *literally*... :)

Anniversary Party and New Classes!

It's one of the best weekends of the entire year at Paper Anthology in Kenvil, NJ. We're celebrating our SEVENTH anniversary with a big party that includes food, games, prizes, special savings,*4* awesome make-and-takes and more The best part? It's all FREE! So come on down and hang out today between 11 and 4! If you can't make it today, be sure to check out the class schedule for the next two months, there are some fabulous holiday (& non holiday!) choices! I'm teaching two:

Bloomin’ Beautiful Holiday Cards:

We’ll learn three different ways to make beautiful, dimensional (& easy!) Poinsettia and Holly Clusters using Heartfelt Creations’ coordinated system of stamps, dies and shaping mold. Then we’ll combine our beautiful blossoms with Authentique’s “Nostalgia” collection on a trio of elegant cards and finish off with Elizabeth Craft diecut sentiments.

Festive Foliage Gift Bags:

We’ll combine diecuts with premium materials like metallic and glitter papers, beautiful felt and vintage buttons to create a pair of lovely gift bags that can be dressed up or down to suit nearly any winter holiday or occasion.

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! ♥