ormolu

wow everyone...

just wow. 

I had a crazy busy weekend and I am very grateful. Thank you.  

Thank you for everyone on the kind comments with my wall. They all made me so happy. 

Right now I am pretty much buried under orders so I made the decision to shut my shop down just for this week so I can catch up. I want to be sure I can get all the orders out from over the weekend before I take on any others. I am working on orders as quickly as I can (in the order I received them) and am planning on having them finished by the end of this week. 

I have had several people ask if I was going to offer another printable (and free) calendar this year. I am definitely going to try. Last year I never really had planned on doing one but I was looking for something I could give as a quick gift- something usable. I like practical gifts. So, I had made it on a whim. This year I will try to get one done earlier though. 

I do have two halloween printables (freebies)  that I will work on getting up in the next day or two.  

great news and great news

But for the second batch of great news you have to make it to the bottom...okay- go peek and come back up here to read the rest ;) 

First- almost all Christmas items are loaded into the shop. I know- almost right? I have one more tag set I need to load but I have not even received finished product yet. They are extra special. 

 

I cannot even begin to go over each new item and I can't pick favorites because I love them all. It is so hard picking out just a few items to highlight here. So, go check out the shop and make sure you read the information on items because it helps to understand the details of what each item is.  These are Christmas Cheer snip-it's. Because you cut them out yourself- I can offer them at a lower price. I was playing around with these a few weeks ago and they are the perfect size for card making! Perfect! I hope to do more of these snip-its in the future. 

 

For Christmas items I went with two color schemes- an all red and a brights. These are the advent assignment tags. I love them because if you are doing a December daily album they will go along just great. Or- I also think they would be a great way to make an advent calendar. The bright color scheme on these coordinate with the number tags in bright- and also the Christmas Cheer tags. 

 

A month or so ago I received a comment on some feedback that they liked that the packaging was not over the top. I have to admit, I never really thought about packaging too much in terms of trying to be a green conscious company. Being a extremely small business it is difficult to focus on those sort of things. I then started thinking about packaging a bit more and how I can improve it at all. I decided, as many companies have lately, that instead of showing contents on the back I would add an additional tag to cut out. I love it when companies do this- so on many of the new products you will see this. 

 

I love the new number tags! These also come in all red. I wanted to include a space for writing or embellishment and I am so happy with how these turned out. There are numbers 1-31 and throughout the Christmas season you receive three additional tags that say Merry Christmas, Twas the night before Christmas and Happy New Year. Great for documenting your holidays. 

 

Arrivederci! I have been wanting to do a travel themed tag for quite sometime. Those of you who know me, know I am very fond of vintage and new items- mixing things up. I am not afraid to purchase something from an antique shop and head on over to Target...in fact those are my two favorite places. I think these have that look to them. There is also another set of tags called excess baggage that go along with these. 

 

I have the sweetest model to help me out with these. Paperchains! I skipped halloween, I know. But I have a special surprise coming on my blog in a couple of weeks to help you guys out with that. These are for Thanksgiving. I came up with the idea to do a Thanksgiving themed paperchain that was more interactive. I have many requests to leave these half blank and have guests at weddings write on them in lieu of guests books. So, with these- set out a little jar full of the strips and have each guest take one and write what they are thankful for. At dinnertime, go around the table and have each guest read what they have written and build a paper chain as they do so. Kids will love it! 

 

I was kinda torn on doing this one. I wanted to include the entire story- but I did not want to make people buy 11 yards of chain! So, a listing is good for one yard of chain- but I have an option available for you to purchase the entire story worth if you just convo me. 

 

Everyone has a favorite Christmas song and O holy night happens to be mine. But I also have a basic Christmas carol chain available in the shop that is in colors of red and green. Both are printed on a music sheet inspired background. 

 

You will notice with the new tag sets (non-Christmas) I did a combination of sizes in one listing. This is something new I am trying as I was trying to think of how I like to buy things. Sometimes we just want a bit of everything, right? This is the baby mine line. I have baby on my mind lately. However, I know everyone does not- so I only included one image of a baby carriage because I picture these being used for everything and anything. Lots of flora and fauna going on here. And speaking of baby... 

We found out yesterday that we are having a boy! We are all super excited- although we would have been excited either way. Since I come from a family of lots of girls I am looking forward to having a boy in our family. I picked up Reiley from school with a blue cupcake in my hand and an ocean water from Sonic because she felt left out of going to the doctors office. She was so happy to find out she is going to have a baby brother! The ultrasound tech and the doctor said everything looks wonderful! In fact the ultrasound tech said he was cooperating so well and she even loaded us up with photos because they were great shots. Then she told us to keep them hidden because typically we would only get 2 or 3...we ended up with a lot more. I told her I appreciate it because I am a scrapbooker ;) 

october special

October special is listed in the shop finally. All three tab sets (45 tabs total) for only $8! 

Still working on getting new items up in there...so close. 

september special

Because I am a total loser I did not get the September special posted in the shop until today. But, it is an awesome deal so I don't feel too bad ;) 

I got a great deal on these journaling cards being printed up so I am passing the savings on. There are twenty four different journaling cards for $6.50. All are still professionally printed on recycled cardstock with soy inks. If you have never purchased anything from the shop before and are wondering about the quality- these would be a great way to try it out. I won't link them up- because with listing and re-listing items are constantly with new links. But I keep the monthly specials at the top in the shop with the featured items always.  I have a limited quantity of these on hand and won't be reprinting them so get them while you can. 

I'm working on Christmas items and a few new lines. Hoping these will be ready for October. I know a lot of companies already have Christmas items up...but I just cannot get into a groove for Christmas in 90 degree weather. Now that I am seeing Christmas items up in stores I am getting moving on it. 

august formalities

August is my favorite month... 

First off- it's my birthday month. Not to mention nearly half of the rest of my families birthday month. 

Second- school supplies! Never mind I am not in school anymore. I love school supply time. 

Third- fall clothes start coming out. I just love fall clothes. The colors and styles are so much more appealing to me than any other season. 

So, in honor of my favorite month I chose my favorite three tags from the shop and put them in their own little kit at a special price. These three tags have been some of my best selling tags so this is definitely the time to grab them- and since they are so flexible, it is a great time to pick some more up if you have already gotten some of these. 

Some Ormolu product also is in the new August Kraft Girl Kits. 

These little quote tags are no longer available in the shop so this is the only place to get a hold of them.

And...if you are familiar with Ready, Set, Create magazine there is a feature on my store in the August/ September issue. I got a chance to check it out and there is so much inspiration in there.  I love what the design team did with their Ormolu products and it's a HUGE magazine!

Plus they are offering a great deal right now through today- for $10 you get all previous 2009 issues plus the current issue.

july special

July special is up (a little late I know). Choose 3 sets of packaging tags for $10. This special will be up throughout July or maybe later... until I figure out what the special for August will be. 

I took a little longer figuring out this special mainly because this week I started running out of product. I knew I was a little low on some items but did not realize how quickly I would run out until Ali's giveaway a couple Saturdays ago. So, I quickly reordered everything but still have some orders in limbo waiting for some tags to be ready for pick up. Crossing my fingers that happens today... 

Reiley was a huge help with getting orders ready to go for me. The even greater thing is I don't even ask her to help- she just knows I need help and asks what I need. A few years back she helped me on huge kit club order and I told her I would pay her. She was expecting maybe $20...but she helped me so much on it I gave her a $50 bill. 

"I didn't even know fifty dollars existed" she said. 

spotlight post & giveaway

Check out Crystal's blog here for some great ideas on using the tags from the shop and a great giveaway today. Crystal has a great blog showcasing products every Friday and techniques- just added it to my blog list :) 

I spent my entire weekend scrapbooking. No joke. I started Friday night...continued on Saturday...and on through Sunday. Reiley locked herself into the room with me and played along. We had a lot of fun- and by Sunday she was stamping and embossing! We made a mess. 

Here is some of the layouts  I did...

This one about our honeymoon. You can't tell, but I used one of the pages from the Melange journaling book on here- and I even sprayed it with glimmer mist. Which is pretty much an accomplishment in itself...because I am more of a scrapbook supply collector rather than a scrapbooker. 

This page about Reiley 'reading' when she was 3. What is really cool about this page is that it was part of a Jenni Bowlin kit and I started putting it together- realized I needed a journaling card of some type- then found a matching 'read' journaling card in the kit! It was fate! I also used a time tag (storytime) which matched really well (the papers on this are more yellow than it is showing). 

A little inspiration from the Fray...

Little Boston looks so content here. She also looks a lot different now. 

I also worked on cards. Cards! I never make cards. I don't really like making cards. They are just so hard to make for me. However, I get suckered into making them for family every so often. I started off doing it because it was easier to make one than go buy one- now everyone in Justin's family expects handmade cards. Makes it kinda difficult to buy one. 

Framed circle tags on this one. I will probably add a greeting to this one...when I need to use it. 

Savoir Faire quote tag on this one. 

I used my little Basic Grey elephant stamp on this guy with some Tim Holtz distressed embossing powder...and a melange quote tag.

Used a journaling sheet from the framed journaling book, a good tag, and a lucky tag (good tag is layered for just the border). 

This one turned out better than I initially thought it would.  I used a new framed sticker but colored it in with some Prismacolor markers. I know those Copic markers are all the rage...but I have a ton of Prismacolor ones from renderings that I want to make use of. They work pretty good too. I really like how the frame turned out...and will probably try a few more like this. 

One thing that totally frustrated me though, was the having to add adhesive to already adhesive products. At least I know my letters are staying on now. 

I feel much better after having some creative time!

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Also, check out this new feature in the shop. I am having monthly specials, while I remember to do so. 

This month is for journaling booklets (not including the newest one). Check it out here.

everyday scrapper review

Samantha over at The Everyday Scrapper did a review on my products! Check it out!

few quick things

If you have not heard of Poppytalk yet...where have you been? Poppytalk is an awesome blog I visit almost daily. Jan does a great job with keeping up in nearly every aspect of design...so I don't have to search the web for hours. Poppytalk also puts on a monthly curated street market of handmade artists. This month is Paper Pops... and I love paper! I also have joined the crowds and have a virtual table set up for this month. I just browsed through this morning and there is a lot of fun stuff happening over there! 

Vintage Plum is a newer scrapbooking kit club that only uses American made products. They have a vintage hip look in their kits and even combine a few vintage pieces along with handmade artist pieces. This month I was honored to have a few of my frames in their May kit, Primary School Summers.  Head on over to check out their kit and reveal video and what the designers have created!