More is More

October Release At a Glance

• We have sneak peeks to share Monday through Wednesday.  All of the new products will be available for purchase on Thursday, October 6th at 8 am PST. You’ll find it all in the Fresh out of the Oven Department at the Taylored Expressions Store.
• Join us as a fan on Facebook for an early peek at the stamp sets, as well as a SPECIAL Facebook GIVEAWAY, on Wednesday night beginning at approximately 6 pm PST.
• Mystery Baker’s Dozen Blog Giveaway: Each day, one lucky blog commenter will be chosen by random draw to win a $10 TE Gift Certificate.  Winners will be chosen from a different Baker’s Dozen blog each day and will be announced on Taylor’s blog on Release Day!  Be sure to hop around to see all the sneak peeks and leave comments on each and every blog for more chances to win. Limit one comment per blog per day, please.  Comments close Wednesday 10/5 at 7pm PST for the drawings.

Oh my!  You are going to LOVE the peeks today!  We are featuring full sized set Woodland Winter plus the coordinating Trim the Tree Taylored Die Set, Mini Set Banner Holiday, Petite sets Moka Betty and Moka Hope and Word A la Carte – SNOW.

I have 2 samples today featuring Woodland Winter and the coordinating Trim the Tree Taylored Die Set.  Honestly when my package arrived the very first thing I wanted to play with was the tree die set.  I actually made 4 cards in my first sitting because I loved it so much!  I’m sharing 2 today and I’ll share the other two at a later date.  It coordinates with the tree stamp in Woodland Winter, but in both samples today, I used the tree without the stamp.  I also used the Frame It Up 1 Die on both cards.

My first card also incorporates the new holiday sentiment set Banner Holidays which includes 16 sentiments formatted to fit into the Banner Day Dies 1, 2 , and 3. This mini set was illustrated by Taylor for the *te* collection.  I used Banner Day 2 Die along with a banner frame image from It’s a Banner Day 2.  The scalloped edge was created with the Medium Scallop Taylored Die.  That adorable little mouse is from Woodland Winter.  Papers are from the Echo Park 6×6 pad Holly Jolly Christmas.  The layered pieces of the tree die are just slightly smaller than the whole tree, so I cut various patterns with the layers and adhered them to a white whole tree and then added sugar sparkly fluff for the look of snow on the edges..

On my second card I cut green layers from patterned paper and curled up the edges before attaching them to a green whole tree as the base.  This card is a little more clean and simple and I used the Scallops and Circles Impression Plate on the red layer and the Musical/Swirls Imapression Plate on the white layer to add texture. The little squirell is popped up on foam tape.

Woodland Winter is a full size stamp set on a 5.75″ x 8.5″ full color sturdy storage panel.  It features 21 images and sentiments illustrated by Doug Applegate fro the Apple Doodle Ink line and will be available Thursday for $21.95.  Just wait till you see all the samples created by the Baker’s Dozen.  So so cute! I’m dying to get more time to sit down and continue playing with this set!

Now let’s see what the Baker’s Dozen has cooked up:

• Charmaine Ikach
• Danielle Lounds
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Karen Motz
• Melissa Sauls
• Melody Rupple
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Tori Wild
• Wanda Guess
• Jen Shults – Guest Designer

Thanks for stopping by.  Please come back tomorrow for Day 2 of Sneak Peeks!

c

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year! 

With Love,

Jami & Curt

Beaker, R.B., and Tessa

Hey there!  Trying to get a quick post in before it’s actually Christmas Eve.  Wanting to share a couple of quick and fun packaging ideas for gifts I purchased at Costco.

For our neighbors I purchased gift certificates for 1 pound of See’s Candy.  There’s just nothing like going in and getting to pick every single piece yourself!  I usually try to make something for our neighbor gifts, but I am more behind than ever this year and I just knew I needed to cross a few things off my list so I went with these yummy gifts.  Once I had them home though, it still bugged me that there was no handmade element so I decided to make my own little boxes just the right size for these certificates.  Super easy with the Scor-Pal.  Paper is from a beautiful My Mind’s Eye stack I picked up on sale at Michael’s.

The second Costco find was gift cards for my favorite local car wash.  I thought it would be an appreciated gift, but something so practical needs extra pretty packaging.

This is the same type of tin I used for my movie tickets in yesterday’s post.  This time I created a sleeve for the tin that simply slides on and off.  I filled the tin with basket shred before I put the gift card in so it’s held tight against the window.

I still have one more gift to buy tomorrow – it’s a piece of a bigger gift actually – and 2 more gifts to make…yikes!  At least all of our wrapping is done – except for those 3 gifts of course.  Ready or not…here comes Christmas!!!

Hey Y’all!  First let me say that I never intended to take a month long break from blogging, but somehow that’s what happened.  Things have just been crazy busy with the combination of Christmas coming and planning a big 90th birthday party (for 4 days after Christmas) for my uncle…plus of course all the regular *stuff* of life.  In fact, I should be in bed right now, but I just had to take some time to get back in touch here.

Earlier this month I held a stamp class that was all about packaaging gift cards for Christmas.  Two of the projects featured a set I concepted for Taylored Expressions called Enjoy.  It’s late so I won’t go into a lot of detail on these projects, but you can let me know if you have any questions.

Two of these projects are very similar to ones I shared previously – the movie tickets gift tin and the mini hinged tin (this time for iTunes).  Here are a few close ups. Remember that you can click on any of these photos to see them larger.

This is the tin that you may know as a “nugget tin” – perfect for the movie tickets you purchase at Costco.  I think I ended up making something like 6 or 7 of these for gifts.  Next is the mini hinged (or altoids style) tin.

I previosuly shared a very similar tin that was decorated for a Starbuck’s card.  This one holds an iTunes card.  Enjoy has a bunch of images for lots of different types of gift cards year-round.

My third project is something I’ve wanted to do since last year.  One of my customers e-mailed me some photos she had saved from blogs that showed this basic idea.  I’m sorry I don’t know who to credit for it, but it was a fun little project using a Sizzix scalloped circle die and the tab punch.

Images are retired SU and there is a cord at the top so this could actually hang on a tree branch if you like.  Here’s the inside holding a gift card.  Tag is from TE.

This was really a pretty simple project to make and there are so many possibilities for decorating these!  I think all 3 of these projects make gift-giving more fun.

So how about you?  Are you all ready for Christmas?  I’m pretty sure I’ll be shopping or wrapping or crafting gifts right up until the last minute this year.  And I haven’t even started working on the big birthday slide show I have planned for the party next week.  I’m not sure how I got so behind, but I’ve tried to stop and take a few minutes every so often to just breathe and enjoy.  I’ve missed you all and hope to be back to a more regular stamping and blogging schedule some time in January.  I do have a couple more things photographed and ready to share.  Just not sure if I’ll get them posted here before Christmas.

Thanks so much for stopping by and Merry Christmas (in case I don’t get back here before then.)  If you have a minute leave me a little hello.  I’d love to hear from you!

Happy Wednesday!  It’s been a busy day – all good.  Just got back from a little walk with the pup.  It’s about 60 degrees out – perfect cool air with the scent of fireplaces burning!  So happy to have this cooler weather after that silly heat wave…just hoping these temps stick around!

Early this morning I carved out some time to stamp just for fun…just ’cause I wanted to.  I don’t do that nearly enough anymore.  I used to play the Sketch Challenge on SCS almost every week and now I rarely play.  As soon as I saw today’s sketch (SC306) I knew I had to create something with it!  I grabbed the Tinsel & Twig Project Pantry from TE.  I had been hoarding it, but finally realized that Christmas will be here before you know it and I need to use up this beautiful kit – no time like the present!

Next I looked through my Christmas and holiday stamps and landed on this adorable image from Panguin Pals (TE). I colored the image with Copics and went over the lights and the star with Spica Glitter pens.  The ribbon on the present was covered with a clear glaze pen.  The penguin’s hat was accented with Sugar Sparkly Fluff adhered with a Quickie Glue Pen.  The image was cut out with a circle nestie and then layered onto a lacey circle and then a blossom nestie (see Spellbinders here.)  All patterned paper, cardstock, pearls are from the Project Pantry.  Ribbon is SU.  First I tied a knot and then with an additonal piece of ribbon I tied the bow around the know and that gave me the double tails.  I believe that ivory crochet trim came from Joann’s.

One more Christmas card for my stash.  I’m trying not to freak out about Christmas cards, but I am waaaaaaay behind.  I usually make 80-100 cards in 3 or 4 designs/batches.  I can hardly stand to make more than 25 or 30 of one design because I do NOT enjoy production stamping.  Usually by now I would have at least half, if not more, of my cards completed – and all of them done by the first week in December.  This year I don’t even have them designed or know what color cardstock I am going to use.  Acccccckkkkkkkkkk!  And I have NEVER skipped sending out Christmas cards….NEVER.  Even in years of great difficulty when I barely had my head above water…cards were sent.  So this is no time to wimp out!  I think I may send less than usual this year, but one way or another…Lord willing…cards will be made and cards will be mailed!

Check back with me in a month or so on that one.

Thanks for stopping by.

May your Christmas be a time to reflect

on the simplicity of His birth

and the magnitude of His purpose.

Merry Christmas!

Jami & Curt

Beaker, R.B. and Tessa

Tessa wanted to show you her new coat…  🙂

and our tree all decorated and ready for family to come and open presents…

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

-Jami