It's been busy at the paper garden! I finished one window. Come by and see the beautiful white trees-- we decorated them with our oversized paper flowers. The handmade papers are from our paper wall and we cut and pasted them into these big alice in wonderland-type flowers. It's so pretty with the lights glimmering on through the papers. Kelley has been busy getting ready for three big classes we have coming up for Friday and Saturday. And Laurie is helping me remerchandise our children's section of fun toys and crafts. We got a shipment of new kid diaries with locks! New colored pencil sets and sketch books that match.. these are the best ever gifts for children. The pencils come in tins and they have themes like butterflys, fairies, dinosaurs, ballerina's, horses, sooooooo cool.. I want one! We also got in our shipment of Copic ciao pens. Ok.. now I think I have every color made in this line.... I think. I ordered these pens like 2 months ago, and they finally came. They are must have's if you like to color in your cards. These pens are from Japan, and they are manufactured there, the rep is in Oregon but it's like pulling teeth to get them when you want them. So there heeeeeeeeeere.
I've also been working on card samples for this Saturday's gifts and goodies class. I made a victorian cone, a calendar and a gift card holder. I will have my husband take pictures of these because they make such wonderful gifts! Our class is sold out for Saturday. But we still have room for our Friday, November 16th day class from 10am-12pm. We also have our Asian card class on Friday from 10am-12pm and Friday evening from 6pm-8pm. Call us at the store if you want to take the class. Here's a card I made using some asian stamps. I love how it turned out.
I used a variety of stamps. The flourish stamp is from Hero arts. I love these stamps and use them for several cards. If you just stamp the corners of your card off the page, it makes it look really euro-like (is that a word?), the vintage snowflake is also from hero arts. There are two sizes.. a small and large. I used the blue scalloped circle marvy punch and rolled in the french blue cat's eye ink pad and stamped the snowflake in blue lagoon. The smaller snowflake is stamped in color box chalk aqua, the flourish stamp is stamped in dark brown color box chalk ink, and the cherry blossom is a set from kodomo inc and i stamped the blossoms in lipstick red. If you look close, you'll see some silver around the flourish. I used a marvy "fine tip" silver pen called deco color with xylene. It's the best pen ever!! I love it because it shines like aluminum, and if you like to mail your cards or invitations in darker colors like chocolate, black or burnt red, then this pen is for you. It glimmers on the envelope and drys instant. We have all colors available. I also like the gold, dark pink, and white. The fine tip pen lets you color in those small crevices.
This next card is done with our new scalloped rectangle punches by marvy. They come in several sizes, but these are the yellow, blue and pink and I stacked them in a 3-tier. I stamped a cluster of small flowers by rubber soul, and punched out a small daisy for the upper left hand corner. The white cardstock is edged with dark brown color box chalk cat eye's and I used a tiffany blue/chocolate sheer dot ribbon... and chocolate 5/8" ribbon and tied it at the bottom of the card. Finally, I used frosted lace stickles to decorate the cake for frosting. and also put it on top of the daisy. It's a nice card for a wedding, anniversary or special birthday.
This Saturday is a make a take, I am lame, I still have to figure out what we'll be doing. The make and take is from 11:30am-1:30pm-- shop during these hours and get 10% off the store when you participate, if you come in after 1:30pm, you can still make a card until 5pm. I will be in the bay area this weekend! Hooooooray.. a day off. I don't know what that feels like. Ken, Miles and I will be spending the weekend in S.F... so exciting. I plan to go to kara's cupcakes, pier 39 for Miles, the Paul Frank store (my favvvvvvv!) and a specialty tea store in the Nordstrom shopping center. I also want to eat clam chowder, and check out some new hip restaurants. Altho, with Miles, I think our 4 star restaurant will end up being Blondie's pizza in union square. My husband and I got married at the Palace Hotel in S.F., so hopefully we'll be able to eat Sunday brunch in the Garden Court where we had our reception with 400 guests!!! Yikes.. that was a big wedding!! I'll have to take some pix of our fun excursion to the city by the bay!
The bamboo boxes were stamped in color box chalk yellow ochre and the Kanji sentiment is by Judikins. It's a famouse Japanese poem.... that's all i know!
Here's one last card I have for today, it's a fun snoopy card. I got the snoopy from a post-it note a customer wrote to me with. I thought.. wow.. that snoopy is small enough to fit onto a cute card, so I save it and cut it out and made a template out of it. I then took two pieces of red cardstock and made two boxy shapes and then outlined the house with a stitch-look in a black pen. I then used the sentiment by a muse "relax it's your day" and punched it out with the blue oval scallop by marvy. I also gave snoopy a nice bright black nose by using the self adhesive gemstones by doodlebug-- Good grief!
