Sweet Cards and Warm Fuzzies!

Oh my goodness, the comments that people are leaving on Lisa Zappa’s blog with memories of their grandmothers or mothers are all so sweet – I wish everyone could win! You can still enter to win a set of our new Vintage Image & Journal Note Booklets HERE at Lisa’s blog if you haven’t entered yet, or if you just want to read some of the comments and feel all warm and fuzzy! She is doing the draw tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pretty cards I recently received that

I wanted to share with you!

Jessica Canham sent this adorable 'thank you' card, which she made after she won some of our new stamp sets. She used a sentiment and the little boy image from our Sweet Kids Stamp Set. I’m not sure what patterned paper she used but I love it and they way she used the scallops and tied all the colors in perfectly! Here is a link to Jessica’s blog: http://wildrosestamper.typepad.com/ I just checked and yippee, she has 3 other adorable cards she made using our the Bird Note Stamps, Rosy Wishes, and one with the Bunny Love image from our Seasonal Booklet.

My only regreat is I don't have time to go outside and take better photos and these look so dark and they really are much prettier!

Carla from http://paperpastorale.blogspot.com/

sent us this beautiful card she created!

She stamped and colored the birds from our

Bird Notes stamps on a shipping tag. Then she used our Altered Stamps to stamp the vintage music paper in brown and it may be hard to see but she stamped the little music notes around the birds and the arrow (pointing at the word Hope) and embossed them in silver and it looks soooo pretty! She inked and mounted everything on a mini floral print paper from our Classic Paper Pad and then on chocolate brown cardstock.

I also wanted to show you this gift box that Cindy

our graphic designer decorated with a matching

card for a wedding gift for a friend. She simplay stamped some of the flourishes from the Flourish Stamp set randomly on white paper and the heart is from our Cherish stamp set. It's simple and elegant! She made a card but I can't find the photo, so will have yo add it later. Okay, this photo looks dark to. I need to make a little photo box to take better photos of samples

You can also see more cool samples our design team has been posting. I saw this beautiful card on DT member Linda Dukes blog

Plus, more here in our online gallery:

http://www.craftysecrets.com/gallery/index.php

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Ticket to Ride Album & Lisa's Blog Candy!

Hi everyone!

Lisa Zappa from our design team has a really fun travel memories album she created using our new Summertime Vintage Image and Journal booklets! Plus there is a link to WIN her BLoG CaNdY farther down! Lisa is a full-time corporate travel agent during the day and she says when she saw the cool vintage travel pages in our new "Summertime" booklet, she squealed with delight because she got so many travel-themed project ideas! She got together with her Grandmother and copied some of her old black & white vacation photos for this project.

She started out with a Provocraft rectangular lunch-box-type tin, and covered it with the distressed harlequin paper from our "Earthy" Paper Pad, which she cut down to size and attached with Mod-Podge. Then she began adhering images from the "Summertime" Booklet with Mod-podge.

Lisa said;
"I was searching for little fun embellishments to add in between the images, and discovered the "Journey" stamp set has a great little "ticket" stamp in the set, that coordinates perfectly with the carnival images from the Image Pad!" The journaling part below the Ferris wheel even has some tiny 'Admit One' and 'Redeem this Coupon' tickets that match.

*AND*, the sentiments from the "Mini Memories" stamp set fit PERFECTLY in the blank section on the ticket stamp! Lisa says she fell so in love with these little tickets that they became the inspiration piece for my entire project and she was stamping the tickets left and right and then stamping words like Wishes, Remember, Special, Memories and others.

This is a great idea, where she stamped off 3 tickets in a row close together, to make it look like they came off of a roll of tickets! She tied them to the top of the tin with ribbon. Her Tips - 1.Use your hole punch to punch the edges out easily and quickly, and to punch out the corners, so that you don't have to cut them out with your scissors. 2. Take the flap off of your hole punch that holds the punched paper, so you can see where you're punching.

She wanted to make a photo album that matched her ticket theme and would fit inside the tin. She created this little album using heavier cardboard. Check HERE to open her template and then save it as a document to print it.

Hopefully this works and if it won't, we will have our webmaster add it to our website and add the link here. You can also make your own template using Lisa's instructions. She cut out 4 pieces of cardboard measuring 4" x 6&5/8", and a circle that measured 1 5/8". She cut her circle into 4 even quarters to trace on the corners of her album

She used her template shape to trace over her pattern paper and also as her chipboard album pages. She covered each of the 4 pages with patterned paper and punched 2 holes in the sides to attach them all with ribbon.


Here's another fun idea Lisa had! Have you seen all of the cool paper flowers with printing on them? She used our Crafty Secrets stamp sets to stamp on her store-bought paper flowers!






She used the script stamp from the "Journaling" set and the music notes from "Altered Art" on cream and white colored flowers, and added them to her pages. She used distress ink to shabby them and buttons for flower centers!

She also created a little travel notebook to journal in embellished with the other carnival image from the Summertime booklet. All of the items fit neatly inside the tin. Just add a pen and you're all set!

Lisa has posted some Blog Candy to WIN a set of our 4 NEW Image & Journal Note Booklets! All you need to do is leave a comment HERE on her blog and she will draw a random winner on Sat. April 26, 2008

http://www.shabbychickjunk.blogspot.com/

Plus, you can see all her other cool posts, as she is always creating for us and has other fav companies as well.

Thanks Lisa for such a FUN project!

You can check our Store Locator here to find a retailer with our products, but call first to make sure they have what you want in stock!

You can also shop online here at Shopatron and one of our retailers will fill your order.

We have a winner, plus some inspiring links!

Hi everyone! We have a winner from the random draw Janel did and it’s Lois! Her comment was: " What cute images...and to win them all...whoo hoo!!!. Now Lois just needs to email us her address and Janel will send her a set of our new Heartwarming Vintage Images & Journal Notes. The 4 themes include Birds & Botanicals, Childhood, Homemade and Summertime and the response has been so great! Thanks to all 140 of you who entered and the wonderful and positive feedback so many of you left!!! The books are shipping to stores now and also available here on Shopatron.

It feels good to know we are on the right track because we have started on at least 6 more new titles that will be available later this summer. Look for vintage Halloween, Christmas, Women, Men, Little Girls, Little Boys and possibly other titles!

In case you tried to download Janel’s Stir Stick Album Sheet, I wanted to let you know it’s been added to our website now HERE as the link wouldn’t work properly on the blog.

This week the talented Lisa Zappa from our design team will be presenting some cool ideas that will be posted here on the blog next! In the meantime, you can visit Lisa’s blog here at http://shabbychickjunk.blogspot.com/ Lisa loves to go junking and shopping for cool new stamp and paper supplies and that’s exactly what she did this weekend with friends – lucky girl!

Also, I wanted to congratulate Vicki Chrisman from our design team for being the featured artist today here at scrapscene You can still also enter the contest on Vickis blog here and the draw is tomorrow!

Last weekend I took my 3 daughters (Katie 25, Holly 22 and Chelsea 21) for a girls roadtrip to Portland and we had so much fun we are going to make it an annual event. To make the 5 hour drive go by faster I made sure we left really early and although they thought the travel Bingo sheets I printed and brought along were corny, they got right into it when they found out I had a pile of prizes in $5.00 bills, 3 cheap bottles of wine and chocolate bars. We laughed so hard we cried and the drive seemed to go by fast. You can print Travel Bingo sheets here at http://www.momsminivan.com/printables.html in case you ever want them to entertain your passagers! For any mom that has teenagers, I want to assure you the fighting stops and your kids will likely become much closer as they get older. My daughters have become best friends and it makes me so happy, because they fought like crazy as pre-teens!

If you ever go to Portland, be sure to visit the Portland Saturday Market, which is on every Sat & Sun and the transit downtown was free! It was so much fun shopping outdoors and it was hot and sunny and all kinds of great food. Here’s some photos from our trip.

Win Our 4 New Vintage Booklets and Print Janel's Stir Stick Album Tutorial!

To celebrate the arrival of our 4 NEW Vintage Image & Journal Note Booklets we are giving away a FREE set of all 4 books! All you have to do is post a comment here on this blog and Janel Brown from our design team will choose a random winning number this Sunday April at 6 pm.

Janel doesn't have a blog, so I’m posting one of the ‘Wood Stir Stick Albums’ here that she was inspired to create by her friend Khileen along with a Free-4-U printable tip sheet you can click on to print. Every time these albums are on display at shows, we get so many questions and requests for instructions, so we asked Janel to give us some instructions to print. You can also visit Janels Online Gallery HERE to see all her albums and projects on our website.

Drat! I just came back to edit this and say the printable tip sheet is not popping up to print, so I will have to have our webmaster add it to our website and eventually this link will work, once she adds it


Now, I have to tell you all about our 4 new Image and Journal Notes because we are bubbling over with excitement to share them with you! The 4 titles include: HIJ-1 Birds & Botanicals, HIJ-2 Childhood, HIJ-3 Homemade, and HIJ-4 Summertime. The books are 3" x 8" and the suggested retail price is $6.75. Each booklet includes 32 pages brimming with wonderful vintage images and journal notes! The pages are conveniently perforated along the top, so they are easy to remove.

I became addicted to collecting old vintage bird images for our Stamps and Cotton Scraps and as my collection grew I knew we had to include them in a image booklet. Adding botanical images seemed to be a perfect pairing and I'm thrilled with this Birds & Botanicals Booklet! It's filled with a mix of stunning florals, antique garden catalog art, beautiful birds, eggs, nests, seed packets and quotes! Cindy van Koll our graphic designer created several collage style images using old botanical images with a mix of antique French postcards, music paper and vintage script writing.

Our new Childhood Image & Journal Notes Booklet turned out so adorable I can’t even pick a favorite page! It took weeks of pouring over 1000’s of images in my antique books, magazines and postcard collection to choose everything. This booklet is filled with a delightful mix of dressed animals from bears, bunnies, frogs and kitties at school, playing and other childhood memories from birthdays to story time! There are color tinted and sepia photos of sweet children, great quotes and tone on tone matching journal pages which Cindy our graphic designer also created.

We had to do the Homemade Image & Journal Notes Booklet because all our kitchen and cooking products are so popular. This time our graphic designer Cindy and I worked very hard to include a fabulous mix of fun retro style images, dancing cutlery, Campbells soup kids, martinis, canning, chocolate, shopping lists, a pink fridge & stove, pasta kids, chefs, kitchen angels and vintage tinted photos with an array of fun words and quotes!
Our Summertime Vintage Image & Journal Notes booklet is packed full of wonderful mix of images from bathing beauties, road trips, picnics, BBQ, camping, fishing, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, the beach and surf boards, to seed packs, garden vegetables, garden catalog art and tinted photos. The images are paired with words and quotes designed to stir up nostalgic summertime memories with tone on tone matching journal pages. The eclectic and fun mix along with the stunning floral images are sure to be a hit! We’ve been crazy busy shipping the booklets out to stores the last couple of days so check with your favorite retailer! You can also order the books online now HERE at Shopatron, or check our Store Locator HERE but be sure to call ahead to check availability. Plus – over the next few weeks our design team members will be giving away some of these new booklets as well! Every time I post here I will add links to any blog candy giveaways for our booklet promo! Currently Vicki Chrisman from our design team is doing 2 draws for 2 pairs of the booklets April 21 here on her blog!

Our design team has already created some fabulous samples!

Vicki Chrisman made this fun retro invite for cocktails using an image from the Homemade Booklet with papers from our Radiant Paper pad and the 'Please come for...' is a stamp from our Coffee & Tea set.

Design team member Lisa Zappa created this sweet card using the bluebird image from our Birds & Botanical Booklet and she tucked the journal note with the quote behind the image as an accent mat.
Janel Brown form our design team made this adorable layout with her grandaughter using the strawberry image and grocery list from our Homemade Booklet!
Vicki Chrisman created this pretty wall plaque using an image from our Birds & Botanical Booklet, with papers from our Classic Paper Pad all mounted on 1 of our new Chipboard Album Rectangle pages
Don’t forget – you can always visit any of our design team members blogs if you click on their links on the top right side of our blog. They will be adding more great samples soon and giving away their blog candy in more of the new booklets!

PS - We seem to be having trouble adding the Childhood title and will get it fixed, but I can see it on Shopatron here.

Please email us any cool samples you create to info@craftysecrets.com or post in our online gallery. We love to share and inspire others to see lots of creative possibilities!

We have a Winner and Great Links

Hello Everyone!

I was about to say Hello Ladies then but thought there may be some men reading this. If there are any men please speak up and tell us what you create by posting a comment!

Well we had 333 people enter this contest and the winner of the second random draw is Heather C, 'Mom of Cody'. Heather said she would choose: Vintage Christmas, our Calendar and Mini Memories stamp sets. Congratulations Heather! Please email us your mailing address so we can send off your prize!

Here are some links to some great printable sheets we have on our website that you may have missed. There are places to put happy birthday messages, say I Love You, a Party Hat & Party Cone Pattern, recipe album and more!

25 places to Say Happy Birthday! okay, I just read this and I wrote it sooo long ago, it was when we had our old Heartwarming Expressions stickers (before we went vintage). # 13 idea says to add those and they are cute but a bit cartoony and on sale on Shopatron HERE plus our 4 Heartwarming Books are on sale as I need to get rid of them and make room for our 4 new vintage image books coming later this month!

Wood File Folder Recipe Book Instructions

and more if you click right here!

Heartwarming wishes,
Sandy