CHA Winter 2012 :: Crate Paper
Crate Paper is up next, and their first collection has a name that certainly got my attention! I do love a Pretty Party, especially when it’s made from paper!
Since the last show, Crate Paper has been acquired by American Crafts – but the company has remained intact with its own product designers and its own design team and so forth, so there’s not any big difference to the experience you’ll have shopping for Crate and using their products. The differences are on the manufacturing and fulfillment side, and that shop owners can now order from Crate, American Crafts, Pebbles and Studio Calico all at once – which could mean some smaller shops will do what’s known as ‘cherry picking’ and choose just bits and pieces from all those companies rather than picking up full collections. But expect larger stores to still carry the full inventory. Right – that’s enough business talk – let’s look at pretty papers, shall we?
Lots of lush 12×12 Pretty Party papers. I love that they have gone with patterns that are easy to use. I love looking at Crate’s collections but sometimes I find them a bit of a challenge once they are on my table – only sometimes. This isn’t one of those times. Bring on the Crate goodness, I say!
Pretties from the Crate design team – Rahel Menig on the left and Jaime Warren on the right, I do believe. (My apologies if I’m wrong!)
Embellishments include layered stickers (that have gems and buttons in the designs), brad assortments with fabric and epoxies and photo frames in interesting materials. More on that in a minute.
Beautiful layers from Christine Middlecamp.
I wish they made this as something we could buy! Sadly no, it’s just part of the display. But what a pretty find and it displays the buttons so well I would be happy to hang it on my wall just like that. I wouldn’t mind if we saw this in reproduction form at the next show, would you?
So many lovely layered cards – sorry I can’t identify the crafters here, but all from the Crate design team.
Crate’s second collection is darker in colours and called Story Teller. It has themes that fit general family life, with a vintage twist, and again a collection that will be easy to move from stash to completed pages. (In general, I think we saw a lot more of this at this show: a focus on papers and embellishments that will make great pages rather than the papers that are so ornately designed we don’t know where to start and they end up languishing in our stash because they are too special or too complicated. More crafting than collecting, which is good in my book. My lacking-in-storage-space book.)
Again, layered stickers and a mix of brads, plus wooden bingo chips for all your numbering needs.
Though they didn’t have samples just yet, Crate added printed washi tapes to their collections, and that blue floral design definitely has my attention. Heading to the right, buttons, printed clothes pegs and 6×6 patterned paper sets.
The 12×12 chipboard sheet gives the best feel for all the motifs in this collection. Lots of cameras and flowers plus typewriters, bicycles and luggage. I love that they added a date stamp as a chipboard piece – although many of us use a date stamp in our work, seeing the image of one was something a little new and I like the library feel it adds to Story Teller. (By the way, that’s the second time I spotted protractors at this show – JBS also had it as a stamp design. Geometry is the new cupcake?)
Paper designs include maps, florals and stripes, with a primary colour base that has been distressed just enough that it seems mature and perfectly worn.
And I promised we would come back to frames! Here’s a better look at the Story Teller frames – in wood. The equivalent frame in the Pretty Party line up are in metal. Something a little different and perfect for a special page or an album cover, perhaps. These even made me think they would look lovely on a Christmas tree – but I promise it is officially WAY too early to be thinking of evergreens and baubles. Definitely.
Both collections ship to stores in February, so look for them to start appearing very soon.
Click here to shop for Crate Paper products. (By the way, they have a current collection that is vaguely Valentiney but would work for many topics, and it’s worth checking out before it disappears to make way for these two collections.)
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