pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

…in need of your help.

There is too much craft stuff here. We can’t move. It needs a new home, and quickly.

Should you have a UK posting address and would like a surprise box of scrapping stuff, then step right up!

Boxes are £15 including postage (to a UK address – sorry I cannot offer these overseas).

Each box will be unique and will not include releases from this current January CHA. Just to make that clear. But things I do have to split amongst these boxes:

12×12 papers by known manufacturers (Bazzill, My Mind’s Eye, Bella Blvd, Pink Paislee, Studio Calico, Little Yellow Bicycle, Cosmo Cricket, K & Company, BasicGrey, We R Memory Keepers, and others).

Stickers and embellishments, also from those companies. Embellishments include brads, ribbons, chipboard and various doo-dads.

Clear stamps.

All of what’s included will be full sheets or packs, with the exception of ribbon which may be varied in length (I figure splitting a 15 yard roll amongst all the boxes would be more useful than landing one person with fifteen yards of one ribbon they may or may not want to use for everything they have ever seen) and chipboard which may loose pieces rather than the original packing (because I just don’t store chipboard in the original packaging).

While each box will be a surprise, its retail value will be far greater than the the £15 – and that includes the postage as well, so definitely a bargain box.

I’ve listed twenty of these and once they are sold out the button shouldn’t let you order but just keep sending you back here – so if you have that happen, then I’m sorry they are all gone for now! But once those twenty have gone, I’ll see if we can move in our flat yet!

Thanks so much for your interest!

xlovesx

PS: Looking for Ten Things on the Tenth? It will be up shortly – go ahead and post your list and come back in a couple hours to leave your link!
Looking for And Now for Something Completely Different? It’s here. Oh my is it a busy day here!

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Next on the list, Pebbles, who make those candy dots embellishments I love so!

They added these crystal dots to that line up, for lots of sparkle in a tiny little embellishment – just peel and stick to your layering for that finishing touch. But don’t worry – there is plenty of paper on offer too!

Hip Hip Hooray is shipping now (and it’s available as of today at Two Peas!) Summery party colours abound. In fact, looking at these pictures are a bit of an antidote to the snow falling outside my window.

Many of the papers have these small repeating patterns making them great additions to your stash (something Glitter Girl discussed this week, by the way!)
(Apologies for the shadow – busy busy in this booth!)

Let it Ring is a patriotic American collection shipping in late April. Stars and stripes abound, but the lettering is something we might use the world over!

Love the idea of printing a collection like this on kraft (something we’re seeing more of from various manufacturers), and the paper rosettes are so very election-year, right? And actually some of those papers needn’t be specifically USA, should you need a good navy or red for a less-specific theme.

After coincidentally spending the last two July fourths stateside after a great many years without such an event, I think I shall be here in London for the day of Yankee Independence for 2012 – but that star garland actually makes me tempted to throw some sort of party. Pre-olympics, perhaps?

Country Picnic is also hitting stores right now, with plenty of soft spring florals in the traditional Pebbles style.

Something a little different in the lettering: a corrugated alphabet in several colours. I don’t always like corrugated card but this was small enough that it looked quite nice! (Find both lettering styles here should they take your fancy!)

Lots of green and pink and dots and flowers. Love this updated look at the classic Pebbles designs. (Did you know Pebbles is one of the oldest companies in the scrapbooking industry? Yep! Years ago we knew them by the much longer name ‘Pebbles in my Pocket’ and they were abbreviated as PIMP on message boards! They still have a retail store in Orem, Utah.)

The addition of handwriting to the embellishments and stamps is quite sweet.

Some inspiration for a Valentine bouquet? (Someone teach The Boy to make paper flowers, quick!)

But the best bit is two of the lines are already shipping to stores, so this is one that won’t make you wait! Click here to shop for Pebbles products, including the new Hip Hip Hooray and Country Picnic collections, plus more than 150 products on sale.

(And by the way, American Crafts Gardenia from the post a few days ago is now available too. Happy shopping!)

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2012 may be the year of the chevron, but it was also marked the return of the Heidis – not just Heidi Grace Kress, but also Heidi Swapp. This Heidi started designing product first for Making Memories, then under her own branding for Advantus, then came work with both Tattered Angels and House of 3, the latter selling digital and printable designs online but then also releasing paper products through Pink Paislee. Caught all that?

And now Heidi is back with her own branding again, but with the orders being fulfilled by Pink Paislee. I think this is a good step we’ve seen with a few brands now: let the creative folks really focus on strong product development rather than trying to carry the burden of everything else about the company too. Surely that option would lead to creative burnout sooner or later? Anyway, let’s look at products, shall we?

First is this, the Foto Flipbook, which is a bit like a minibook redefined – not like a Smashbook or a Daybook but like its very own design with a mix of page designs and sleeves for 4×6 photos.

Even Heidi’s very first product releases showcased her handwriting as their trademark, so long-time fans won’t be disappointed by pennants and stamps that continue that tradition.

Mistable papers are something Heidi has worked with possibly more than anyone else over the last few years, so there are designs of those to match plus file folders to customise too. The file folder concept is part of Heidi’s Memory File system – making a file box an alternative to an album with page protectors. Check out this post on Heidi’s blog for a look at how she scrapbooks on these folders then tucks them away in the Memory File box for safekeeping. But back to mistables:

Spot the goodness at the left: those block letter stickers from before, but now colours are customisable with mists or paints. Definitely ordering those.

A bit of day-glo neon! With the idea that like in fashion, if you use it at all, you’ll just use a bit. This seemed hit or miss with buyers – but I think that’s much the same as neon on fashion. Either it catches your eye or it annoys you. Fair enough: take it or leave it as suits your style.

A closer look at the glitteryness on the various pennant options.

Something a little different: the Stix embellishments. An embellishment… on a stick. Indeed! I’m sure we’ll see these on party table displays soon, but I’m interested to see how they end up on papercrafting projects.

Handwritten epoxy stickers and paper bows – Heidi loves paper bows on her projects!

Another option in the flip book design – perfect for a summery getaway!

That Polaroid-style photo frame? That’s actually part of the product line-up! It’s a frame that snaps around the picture to make it look and feel like an instant photo even though it’s a regular print. They are called Instaframes and are perfect for square photos, so extra fun for those who use Instagram.

Between glitter and travelesque papers, I was pretty much at home here!

Look for this line to hit stores in late spring. Will be this be one for your wish list?

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I have to be honest and say I miss the days when Creative Imaginations was producing the Narratives line of scrapbooking products and since that line went into an indefinite hiatus, nothing there has really inspired me to craft.

However… because something totally kooky caught my eye, I decided it was worth a look around and I ended up taking more photos than I expected.

Of things like a brand new range of 4-H branded papers.

4-H will make no sense here in England, but as someone who grew up in Kansas, I can heartily put my hand up and sing along with ’4-H, for youth, for America, 4-H!’ How do you describe 4-H? Like scouts but it’s girls and boys together? With an emphasis on farming rather than camping? But also on all things handmade, with projects that teach you to bake and sew and craft. And every year’s learning leads to the county fair, where you enter what you’ve created or grown or taken care of all year long and hope to win a prize ribbon. The 4H idea stands for head, hands, health and heart, but that doesn’t explain anything. Basically, it’s a homegrown youth organisation that is most popular in areas with lots of agriculture but has grown to cover all sorts of special interests. Does that make sense?

And long story short, there are now special 4-H themed papers for scrapping all that goes along with the 4-H experience. This is smarter business than many might realise, as the end-of-year assessment book that 4-H members put together to win awards is essentially the first way I scrapbooked. That’s one way to sell a lot of scrapbooking paper to people who don’t know they are scrapbooking!

There is also this doodle line, which is mostly black and white and designed to be coloured in to suit. We’ve seen this come and go over the last fifteen years of the industry, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen it in a very youthful style.

As an aside, it reminds me of a pair of shoes I had in the sixth grade that came with special colouring pencils. A pair of shoes that may have landed me in trouble for colouring on my feet when I was supposed to be listening to a lesson on cell walls in plants. Why oh why do I have remember the details of such things? Moving on.

Wait, wait: what’s this?

Why yes: it’s an Alice in Wonderland collection! It’s under the IOD Designs label and ships in March.

Admittedly, I have a drawer full of Alice in Wonderland party pictures and I’m still not sure I could use every single thing in this collection, but it’s so pretty and dreamy. It’s nice to see an Alice collection that is light and airy – I have found a few other Alice-themed designs to be very dark or very cartoony, so this is a happy medium.

The same artist also has a Raggedy Ann and Andy line, at which point the Creative Imaginations booth really started to do crazy things to my mind, as my bedroom as a toddler was decorated entirely in Raggedy Ann and Andy, so between doodle shoes, 4-H papers and this, I was a little overwhelmed in memory land!

And then I was brought back to the modern day with butterflies. Hurrah.

But are you ready for the real crazy? This was the line I would ask people if they had seen yet and they would just look at me in amazement and say ‘surely not’. But yes. I bring you a scrapbook collection based on… Awkward Family Photos. A website entirely based on laughing at old photos that now seem very strange. And the collection looks like this:

Somehow… I’m not convinced. I mean yes, it’s a funny idea. But I’m not convinced.

And then there’s the ultimate scrapbooking gag gift:

Yes. A premade album ready for you to add your own collection of awkward family photos.

Complete with themed divider pages with excerpts from their book/website.

The baby themed divider? Includes a baby posed with head in hands who just happens to be throwing a rather rude gesture toward the camera as a result. Seriously? For scrapbookers? Exactly what kind of store is going to stock this item? It seems like the sort of thing you would find in a joke shop… but joke shops don’t really attend CHA. And I think it would take a special kind of scrapbook store owner to stock many of these alongside supplies for the serious crafter.

So points for making me laugh? Yes. Dollars for making me order? Not so much.

Now you’re all going to send me one of these for Christmas, aren’t you? I can see it now: Journal your Awkward Family Photos 2012.

Sigh.

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I love how some things become such a trademark and these paper lamps covered in Hambly transparencies? They are a total tradeshow trademark now. Hambly always have a small but perfect booth and as soon as I can see the lamps, I know there is good stuff to be found.

You need to know that Hambly also have awesome customer service and because they are small, they have this small team that talks to people so personally and they are just extra welcoming. So I walk up and they say ‘Stop right there: we know where we have to start. Let me show you this…’ and that ‘this’?

It’s CAMERA PRINTED WASHI TAPE.
Be still my heart.

I may have told them if I have to give up clothes and start dressing as a mummy, I want to be a mummy clad in camera-printed washi tape. True story. (Obviously I’m talking Egyptian wrapped-in-bandages mummy. Not British mother of small children mummy. I don’t think they generally change their clothing habits that dramatically.)

So yes, let’s focus. There’s new washi tape and that collection includes a camera print, and also a larger size with labels, perfect for adding right to a photo or for attaching an overlay to your layout. Nice.

Some pretty-pretty pages from the Hambly design team.

Brand new mini overlay sheets, perfect for adding transparent layers to divided page protectors. Love these, and will be stalking the new products at Two Peas for their arrival day as I’m sure they will be gone in no time. May have learned that one by experience.

The mini overlays also include labels. Cut apart then attach to your project with tape, staples, stitches, brads or clear adhesives like spray glue or a Xyron machine. (Or if you’re adding more layers, use your regular adhesive and just hide it with something else on top.)

Six new patterned papers in a different look for Hambly – two with very colourful prints and four with just one main colour, including a chevron for good measure.

And these look very fun indeed – mistable papers with a resist pattern – in clouds and hexagon prints (and a couple other patterns). Just add mist or ink over the top and the pattern will stay white but you can customise the background colour.

Which means even if you want to make the sky behind those clouds blue, you can do so with your own amount of colour and shading, and create pretty faded looks like this example with blue at the top but the pale paper at the bottom.

Eeep: do you see what I see? Map print overlays? Indeed!

In fact lots of things that are relatively travel-themed. Clouds…

Airplanes…

…what I’m convinced looks like the graph paper they use with a seismometer? I could be way off here, but it’s fancy graph paper. Let’s go with that.

And non-travel things too, like two different chevrons and a hexagon design.

Diagonal stripes and herribone – all four of those will be really easy to use for plenty of themes.

And the map!

So do excuse me if you see someone dressed as a mummy in camera-printed washi tape holding a see-through map trying to find her way around town. Sadly there is just something about the unique products that Hambly creates that causes me to go a little less than normal.

In more acceptable terms, let’s hope we can get these products and use them on craft projects. Screen-prints are made to order so the shipping times will vary, but look for these to start hitting stores in late March.

Click here to shop for Hambly products, including select designs at 25% off.

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If you’re a big-time Ranger fan, you will have already sought out all things Tim Holtz and so on, so do forgive me for not showing you the entire booth. I’m really boring when it comes to inks and I like Distress Inks for the edges and Jenni Bowlin inks for stamping and that’s pretty much where I stop.

But pretty sprays in bottles? That does catch my attention.

Dylusions is new to the Ranger family but not really new to many crafters here in England. Dyan Reaveley has been crafting at Art from the Heart in Yorkshire for ages, and has brought very cool innovations to brightly coloured papercrafting, with her own ranges of papers, stamps, paints and mists. Having been appointed as a signature designer for Ranger, her fabulousness gets to go global. Very exciting.

This debut line of products includes beautiful mist colours and a wide range of masks, with her signature style and lots of freedom in the designs. The perfect remedy for anyone stifled by too many straight lines!

Plus all these stamps! Lots of hand-drawn goodness and stamps that layer together for collage effects. A very different style to some of the other products I’ve highlighted from the show, and it’s for that very reason that I was happy to see this collection appear. Good to know that we’re still very much an industry about creative freedom and inclusion, even when there are perhaps fewer collections and manufacturers than a few years ago. I love the energy in this line.

And my favourite thing is how bright the colours are in the Dylusions mists! The colours are sheer but layerable, so the right side shows you the difference a second coat can make, along with a mask. For a long time I thought Ranger was all about the earth tones, so when they release products with bright colours it makes me smile – and these are their brightest tones yet.

Here you can get an idea for Dyan’s own creative style and how these products look when used together in altered art and art journal pages. So very different to my own projects and yet I could look at them all day, peering at the tiniest of details!

But in case you’re not quite convinced just yet, there are certain elements hiding in this collection that might be right up your street even if you’re not working in layers of technicolour mist – like these phrase stamps (and also the journaling lines and bunting to the left). Perfect for scrapbook pages and cards – and adaptable to any style and colour combination you fancy! I love looking for treasures like this.

The stamps are shipping now and mists and masks ship later in February, so look for them to hit stores soon.

Click here to shop for products from Ranger, and today find a few Dylusions stamp sets for 50% off!

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Every once in a while there is a little surprise at CHA that you could miss entirely if you don’t look carefully. This time that surprise was a collection called French General.

It’s inspired by an actual store, with the same name, filled with carefully curated vintage finds and Parisian chic wares by Kaari Meng. A look at the shop website will give you every confirmation that the store could easily translate to a craft line. Certainly. (And Moda already makes a French General fabric line.)

But what I didn’t see coming was the label behind it all. This is the new look for Jolee’s Boutique – the same branch of EK Success that has been making layered, themed embellishments for years. The same company that sells a tiny paper replica of Tower Bridge. That’s who is making this. And that’s why it was my biggest surprise.

Overall, this is a button line. A dramatically elegant and stylish button line, but I do mean the vast majority of the product consists of buttons. All sorts of vintage buttons recreated so they can be available easily and consistently, so you don’t have to book a trip to Portobello Road to sift through every market stall in search of something right for your project.

Buttons… but also paper. Lots of small paper options. Stacks of it – 64 pieces in the pack.

Coordinating tags and twine – perfect for party decor and gift giving. Could work beautifully for the right kind of wedding too.

Prettily packaged ribbons – again reproductions of lush vintage pieces. (Spotlights in product booths: you are not my friend.)

These button cards are designed so everything except the outside plastic is part of the product – so you could use the buttons alone or you can use the small card they are on or you can use the larger card that holds the small cards. You never knew you needed so many layers of button-holding-papers, but suddenly you do! If only because it’s very, very pretty.

Memo-board collections of ephemera – I’m not sure on this one, as I always get a bit confused with reproduction ephemera. Do I want real tickets in my scrapbooks? From things I have actually attended? Or should I have pretty paper versions of things that possibly didn’t even happen in my lifetime? I know some artists will make beautiful things with these – I’m just interested to see how they use them!

There are full variety packs that can be used as page kits – or I think you could use one spread throughout a full album to add the French Market touch to things you’ve made with your existing supplies.

This collection really reminds me of Rebecca Sower and the days when she was scrapbooking prolifically – she had her own line of supplies (with EK Success) and wrote some very beautiful books and had this very homespun and heartwarming style to her work. Her embellishment line was flat paper that looked like it had real buttons and felt and all sorts of things. I know this line is the work of the French General team, but there is a dreamy part of me that thinks there is a natural link to Rebecca’s work from those years and this evolution to the days when flat scrapbook pages are quite rare. (I remember far too clearly the days when we had discussions about the dangers of putting buttons on pages! Rebecca was a daredevil by those terms!)

And onto seeing these products in action: all those layers of paper and card behind the buttons. See, we do need them after all!

Of course my scrapping desk always looks this beautiful with my supplies just waiting to be put to use. Oh. Wait. Maybe it doesn’t. But it could?

A little preview of pretty things that can be created – but I think we’ll see more come from this once the product is out there and ready to be mixed and crafted in any style, of course. But I’m still a little shocked that this is Jolee’s Boutique. Did not see that coming.

Determined to include a shopping trip to see the real thing next time I’m in California… but look for all these products to hit stores in March.

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Cosmo Cricket has had an interesting year, shifting from an independent company wherein the designers were the same people doing all the other business involved in a paper company – sales, marketing, production and fulfillment – to being acquired by Advantus, a parent company that covered the older Heidi Swapp brand and The Girls’ Paperie, along with their ongoing brands like Cropper Hopper organisation and Ideaology by Tim Holtz. In theory, this would allow the designers to focus on their true strength and create great paper collections without so much of the worry from other sides of the business. So perhaps this show was a bit of a test of that partnership.

I’m thinking they definitely passed. Cosmo released four new collections, and they are some of my favourites since the days of Early Bird and Girl Friday (my two favourite Cosmo collections of all time).

Plenty of pretty samples and clever booth design with drawers and suitcases as shelves. Lovely!

They’ve long had tiny letter stickers in the Tiny Text line, and added phrases with the releases last summer, which sold out quickly… so perhaps not a surprise to see further expansion here. Plus layered stickers, which are something new for them.

This is Evangeline, the most formal of the four collections. Cardstock stickers, chipboard pieces, 6×6 papers and a journaling notepad.

I think that grammatical error is just added with a printer, not from the product line. I hope. Because otherwise I love this card. So charming.

Tea for Two feels a bit more like a country kitchen. Soft reds and blues with fabric-inspired patterns.
And yes, washi tape for each collection. It’s 2012, after all. Must have washi tape!

I thought the embellishments were nice and then I saw that layout with the bouquet of chipboard flowers and decided they needed an upgrade to lovely.

And we shift to more muted tones and perhaps the Cosmo take on the Pantone colour of the year with this bookish line called Twenty-Three.

Pink, grey and something that is a step back from tangerine. Interesting… and I like it.

I may have been swayed by all the old cameras.

Or this lush cut-apart caption paper.

Or some lush layouts.

Or the idea that pinwheels and numbers and stripes are all elements that are very easy to use. I wonder what other collections this will get mixed with on layouts – the grey will tie it to other things easily for those who love to mix and match.

Last of the four collections is Baby Jane – something quite bright and versatile, so don’t let the ‘baby’ in the name fool you!

The papers definitely aren’t baby-themed – great for all sorts of scrapping in red and turquoise. (A colour combination I love!)

In the embellishments, you’ll spy a few babies and prams, in a Victorian style, but plenty of florals and sewing motifs as well. And measuring tape in washi form.

These collections ship to stores in March! Which is your favourite? And is this a return to form from Cosmo Cricket? I’m excited for great things to continue now their designers can focus on their creative energies with papers that will be so versatile.

Click here to shop for Cosmo Cricket products, including some great 50% off deals while they last!

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