Christmas in July Sale on Etsy! Featured Shop: Caffeinated Papercuts

Happy July everyone! I admit, I'm immensely biased in thinking that this is the best month of the year...warm weather, vacation time, longer days...oh yeah, and my BIRTHDAY! :D

Happy birthday to me...presents for you...today kicks off my series on some of the shops participating in the big Christmas in July sale on Etsy. They'll be easy to find, just search for 'christmasinjuly' or 'cij' and be amazed by the goodies that pop up! Some have coupon codes, some have already marked down what's on sale, and all are amazing. It's the perfect way to jump-start your holiday shopping.

Today's shop spotlight is my own shop, Caffeinated Papercuts. (Hey, it's my birthday, I get to be a tad self-centered today.) I've been working like mad to get the shelves stocked before the sale begins. Our sale will begin on July 12th...unless of course you 'like' us on Facebook. There you will find a coupon code for the pre-sale in celebration of our hitting 100 fans by my birthday! That coupon goes live on July 10th, letting you skip the lines and shop early. The coupon ends at midnight on July 11th to make way for the public sale on the 12th. Yup, no double discounts. Sale ends July 22nd at midnight!

So, what's the sale? All right, you're hearing it here first: 30% off the whole store. Yup, everything; coasters, cards, magnets...time for them to get new homes!

I've been getting our new holiday merchandise up and listed this past week, along with new coasters, recipe holders, and bottle cap magnets. I think they came out adorable, but I might be a tad biased...

Red & Black Penguin Gift Tags

Snowy Forest Winter Wishes Holiday Card

Pink Owls in Pink & Green Trees Handmade Tile Coasters

Strawberry Recipe Clip with 3 Recipe Cards

Holiday Upcycled Bottle Cap Magnets, Set of 4

All right, that's about as much self-promotion as I can handle today...I'm off to eat some birthday cake. :)

To all my USA friends, have a wonderful Fourth of July!

Pinwheel 'Happy Birthday' Gift Tags

So I have to say, I love Pink by Design stamps. They have fun stamps that give a nice, clean impression time after time. So when I discovered that they're doing weekly challenges now I just had to jump on board!

You can find this week's challenge on their blog: Ink it Pink it Challenge PbD03: Red, White, & Blue

So, I was going to link up the sailboat card I made, but then I got the urge to make pinwheels. I've been wanting to make them ever since I saw the Lawn Fawn tutorial video a few months ago and today I had a brainstorm as to what to do with them. (Yes, it did hurt a little...all good brainstorms do.)

So I grabbed a piece of My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper and made a little 3"x3" square. Some cutting, hole punching, and folding got me an adorable pinwheel! I secured it with a pretty brad and attached it to half a lollipop stick with a Glue Dot. I then grabbed one of the shipping tags I had crumpled up, smoothed out, and rubbed Distress Ink all over and added some of my new addiction to it - washi tape.

I am absolutely in love with the stuff! I have 6 rolls I'm playing with now and more on the way...shhh, don't tell my husband! One of the really, really cool things about washi tape is that you can stamp on it! In keeping with the theme, I added a strips of red polka dot & blue striped washi to the bottom of my tag and stamped it with one of the Happy Birthday sentiments from the Pink by Design set Birthday, Birthday. It is quickly becoming my go-to set for birthdays. There are so many different fonts! I liked the fun feel of this one:

Are you seeing how cute this is?? I added my pinwheel onto the tag and I was DONE! It was so quick & easy!

All I need is a package or gift bag to put it on!

Of course, then I was standing there going "you know, I already have another square and lollipop stick ready to go..." and suddenly I had two gift tags. I reversed the paper and washi tapes in the second one to make them a little different.

They're just so bright & cheerful!

So then I realized that the baby was still asleep...and I wondered what they'd look like on the red tags I had done up...and suddenly I had four gift tags.

Making these might be a bit addicting...

Aren't they just so stinkin' CUTE! They would be such an adorable addition to a present...heck, they're practically a present within themselves! I'm putting them up in the store as well, hopefully they head off to a good home quickly. I like it when my creations get a good home.

So, are you all off to make pinwheels now? :)

Lawnscaping Challenge #25: Birthday!

Now that I'm blogging again and the holiday rush is over, I've actually started (gasp!) reading blogs again. I know, it's craziness, but it had to happen eventually. I've followed Lawn Fawn's blog for over a year now but just recently discovered their Lawnscaping blog and challenges. Their current challenge is right up my alley so I decided to jump in and come up with a birthday card!

Here's their inspiration photo, in celebration of their birthday:

Now obviously they'd like it if I used Lawn Fawn stamps for the challenge, but it's actually not a prerequisite. Good thing, too, as it turns out all I have are Christmas stamps and Get Well stamps from Lawn Fawn! Eep! (Their new breakfast set is totally on my 'must have' list, though).

So, what did I make? Take a look:

And then on the inside:

Cute, right? Who doesn't love yummy cupcakes on their birthday, especially chocolate ones.

How I made it:

• ivory linen cardstock base (paperandmore.com), cut to a folded size of 4.25"x5.5"
• chocolate toile paper (Recollections, Michael's store brand) cut to 4"x5.25"
• chocolate cardstock (from my stash), cut to 3.5"x4.75"
• pink cardstock (from my stash), cut to fit the stamp...about 1"x2"
• white cardstock (seriously, you should see how much paper I own)
• birthday stamp set (from my stash)
• chocolate ribbon (stash again), about 4"
• StazOn Java Bean & True Black ink
• Versamark Plumeria chalk ink
• watercolor pencils
• glitter glue
• hole punch
• cutter
• scissors
• adhesive
• Zots 3D dots

I started by stamping the cupcakes onto the white cardstock using the True Black ink. Then I started 'decorating' my cupcakes with the colored pencils. You could probably use Copics as well, but I haven't been able to budget them into my 'habit' yet. Carefully cut them out leaving a little bit of a white edge and set aside.

Ink the edges of the chocolate toile paper with the Java Bean and attach to the ivory card base. Next comes the inked chocolate cardstock. Stamp the sentiment onto your pink cardstock, punch a hole for the ribbon, then ink the edges. (Don't do what I did and ink the edges before punching the hole...you wind up with Java Bean fingers!) Feed a bit of ribbon thru the hole and knot it, trimming the ends to make them uniform and cute. Attach to the bottom corner with the 3D Zots to pop it off the card. Now for the cupcakes - attach them with the 3D Zots as well, then add 'confetti' with the glitter glue. After the glitter is dry, stamp the inside of the card with your sentiment. All done! A pretty, handmade birthday card for friends and family. You can easily make several of these at a time and keep them on hand for, well, birthdays!

Let me know if you make one yourself - I'd love to see how it came out.

Happy Crafting!

Party Hat Invitations

As I wave goodbye to over 100 cards heading out to a craft show in Vermont, I finally have time to start crafting for myself again (and blogging about it!). Hard to believe that a year ago this time I was very pregnant and now I'm planning my son's first birthday party! Where has the time gone?!?

Naturally I'm taking on the task of making the invitations myself (the joys & trials of being a paper crafter) and inspiration struck when I saw the latest email from Scrapbooks Etc. featuring this card which shall now be referred to as the inspiration card. I loved the playfulness of it and headed off to the craft store to recreate it.

My original plan was to stay very close to the inspiration card - polka dot paper, bumbles on the bottom, button top. Hah! Not only could I not find polka dot paper but the cost of the bumbles was obscene. I'm only doing 20 invitations, but when one spool of bumbles costs $3.50 and only gets you 4 cards...um, NO. As I stood there fretting over what to do now, my husband looks at me and says "how about plain paper and fun ribbon?" Well heck, why didn't I think of that?!? Creative burnout, that must be it...did I mention the 109 cards?

So off my genius husband and I went to the ribbon aisle (I showed him where it was, regaining some crafty points) and he found a cute spool of polka dot ribbon. We took it back to the scrapbook paper aisle where he picked out some dark teal paper to complement the ribbon, handed it all to me and said "here, do your thing!" Ok, he also created a template out of scrap paper I had printed coupons on so we could figure out how many cards we could get from each 12"x12" sheet and what was a good size base card. It's nice to have a husband who can think creatively, too.

The rest, however, was now up to me. Raiding my mother's button collection (this is a perfect craft for all those buttons you have laying around!) I now had the last ingredient I needed for some adorable party invitations.

What I used:

• dark teal 12"x12" card stock
• yellow 12"x12" card stock
• green 12"x12" card stock
• spool of polka dot ribbon
• spare buttons no more than 3/8"
• 1-1/2" circle punch
• Cricut to make the number 1's (from George & Basic Shapes, 2" tall)
• chalk to ink the edges 
• adhesive
• paper cutter and/or scissors
• word processing software to create the wording

My first step was to create the actual invitation wording for the party. For this I used Publisher, created a new page size, and added a triangle shape to stay inside of. I didn't want the wording to fill the entire inside of the card, so I made it about 1/2" smaller than the card. After setting up my shape it was a simple matter of staying inside the lines, choosing colors that complemented the card design, and printing them out on white card stock. I was able to get four invitations to a page which was great. Using as little paper as possible always makes me happy.

Those swirlies are me preventing party crashers...;) I printed this one on scrap paper which is why it looks, well, blah.

Now it was time to start making the party hat. Taking the teal card stock I cut the sheets into four 6"x6" squares. The square was then folded on the diagonal making a triangle, but not the type of triangle I wanted.

Using the point on the unfolded side I drew a line across the bottom and cut off the extra. Now it looks like a party hat!

Next I inked all the edges and the crease on the hat. You don't have to do this, but I'm an edge-inking addict and couldn't help myself.

While the edges dried I set up my Cricut to start cutting number 1's out of the yellow card stock. With the machine cutting away I set to work punching out circles. Amazingly enough they were done pretty fast and I inked all those edges before setting them aside. What, I told you I'm addicted...

Next was cutting the ribbon into lengths. I made each strip just a little larger than the bottom of the card to leave room for trimming it down to the angle of the card. My buttons didn't need anything (I decided not to make that huge, crazy bow) so now I was ready to start assembling!

Taking my card I attached the invitation wording to the inside with my adhesive.

Back on the front of the card I added the ribbon along the bottom and trimmed the ends to the shape of the card.

The circle went in the middle with the number on top. Adding the button on the top point I was done!

Hmm, now where did that number 1 go...?

Just 19 more to go...best part is that now the card fits nicely in a standard envelope, so no added postage!

Had I stuck with the bumbles on the bottom as in the inspiration card, something tells me they wouldn't have survived the post office.

Let me know if you try this yourself - I'd love to see pictures! Happy Crafting!