“We need 20 handmade thank-you cards to send to a group of sales reps for one of our distributors please” was management’s request. Now that’s the kind of assignment we love to take on—and it showcases one of our favorite papercrafting products – Fantastiques!
Robot's Best Friend
Popcorn For Two
Trice Boerens designed these beautiful watercolor illustrations of whimsical characters and creatures. You just pop out their heads and limbs from the book, and attach them to one of the photographic torsos from the back pages, or create your own torsos with found objects…or try needlefelting one, like I did for the little doggie shown here (here’s a great book on needlefelting dogs, by the way)
With Fantastiques, your greeting cards practically design themselves…the characters’ expressive faces do all the work—it’s really fun to imagine what they might be thinking and then match it to the sentiment of your card. In order to make 20 cards quickly, we created a simple background design using velvet paper, inked edges and ribbons for a textural contrast. Then comes the popping-out party! Mixing and matching body parts with cute little brads was such a kick! We adhered them to the background with just a few raised glue dots, so the arms and legs can move around.
So our heartfelt thanks was written inside each card, and they have been sent to a group of new reps who will be working very hard to sell our books and products. You can see all 20 cards in the Fantastiques Flickr group…I’m totally addicted to these little guys….once you get some for yourself, you’ll know what I mean! :-)
The Cardiff Quilters Guild in the United Kingdom recently held their annual holiday party. The groups leader, Teresa, issued a challenge to her fellow quilters.
She gave every one a piece of Timtex and backing and challenged them to make a Christmas Postcard. According to Teresa, everyone rose very well to the occasion. Here are a few of the Timtex Christmas postcards from the Cardiff Quilters Guild:
Learn more about the Cardiff Quilters Guild and the holiday party on Teresa’s blog.
Happy Holidays!
Sitting on my desk is a READY-TO-GO accordion book.
Last year I purchased 25 Accordion Blank Board Books, as a donation to my daughter’s preschool classroom. I gave them to the teacher and asked “Do you think you could use these for something?”
I didn’t give her any suggestions on what she could possibly do, just to see what she might come up with. I was surprised, along with the rest of the parents, at the end of the year “graduation” with a gift from the teachers, an accordion photo album, highlighting big events throughout the school year. There are photos of Livi with Santa, at the pumpkin patch, a class photo of all the children in their Halloween costumes, the fire station field trip (a photo of Livi and a firefighter spraying the fire hose, priceless), the St. Jude’s Trike-a-Thon, and they even had the kids do handprint turkeys. It is such a nice remembrance of my daughter Livi’s preschool year.
The best part of it was something that was completely unplanned by the teachers. When you fold the accordion in, you can see at the same time a photo of your child from the first day of school along side of a photo of your child at the end of the year, both photos include your child’s height. Almost every child grew 2 inches and they all transformed from toddlers at the beginning of the year, into young children ready for kindergarten at the end of the year. It is so amazing to see this change in a single school year!
Any of you who have your own blog to showcase your cardmaking, scrapbooking, altered arts or mixed media work probably know about “challenge blogs.” Challenge blogs can be hosted by anyone, from large craft manufacturers to individual artists. I have found online challenges to be so much fun, not to mention incredibly inspiring and motivating. Whenever I want to make something but I’m stumped, a challenge is just the ticket. Sometimes I’ll hit several challenges in one week, just to stock up on my stash of handmade cards or gifts. I also love the worldwide online community of artists and crafters that I am now a part of…I’ve made so many new friends who love to create stuff as much as I do! A long list of my favorite challenge blogs is on my own personal crafting blog.
For those of you who are not familiar with challenge blogs, here’s how it works.
So here it is…..announcing C&T’s very own MONTHLY PAPERCRAFT DESIGN CHALLENGE!
This is so exciting!
Each month we will post a new design challenge that features one of our fabulous papercraft products. Our Design Team will provide inspirational ideas on each theme to get you thinking. And the best part is the PRIZE DRAWING – we’ll give away a valuable product package each month – everyone who enters the challenge will be eligible for the drawing!
Design Challenge #1: Happy 2009!
So many options!!
Create something to celebrate the New Year using any of our Ready-To-Go!® Blank Board Products, available at your local craft or scrapbook store, and many online retailers. Just a few ideas to consider….a festive centerpiece, a photo cube of your holiday party pictures, or a journal of your New Year’s resolutions. Visit our Flickr Design Gallery for more inspiration!
Post your comment here with a link (or just type the URL address) to a picture of your entry by January 5th, 2009. Be sure to check back between now and then to see the other entries and make new online friends….nothing makes a artsy-craftsy blogger happier than visitors who leave COMMENTS!
We’ll post a Sampler Showcase and announce our first prize winner shortly after January 5th. Thanks for playing along – we look forward to visiting you and seeing your creations!
If you haven’t already, get yourself a copy of the December/January Issue of Quilters Newsletter. There is a great article on C&T’s efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and become more environmentally responsible. I encourage everyone to read through all the steps our company has taken to become more green and the great results we have already seen from our efforts. Read the whole article here: Quilters Newsletter December/January Issue
We are doing something we’ve never done before… we are releasing a block pattern from our next Block of the Month to you — before it is published! This Block of the Month is so new that it doesn’t even have a name yet!
It is our hope that you will make a project using this block and send us a photo of your project by March 1, 2009. Our plan is to include as many of these project photos as possible in the Block of the Month publication (tentative release date Spring 2010). There are some rules that you need to follow and they are listed in the PDF.
Click
here to go to our home page. The link to the PDF is in the information about this free block. We hope you have fun working with this block and that you come up with some very cute projects.
Happy stitching from us both!
The possibilities are endless when it comes to the Create & Treasure® line of Ready-to-Go!® Blank Board Products. C&T Designer Margert Ann Kruljac created a project called “A Dozen Pretty Little Things” using Ready-to-Go!® Blank Board Blocks 2 1/4”. The eclectic work of art can be seen in the November/December issue of Altered Arts Magazine or by clicking here: A Dozen Pretty Little Things, Altered Arts Magazine
I love going to Quilt Market twice a year and I can’t believe that this was my 12th market! I am always delighted by the wonderful fabrics, creative new pattern designers and cool new notions that I see each season. While I was there, M’Liss and Michael Hawley took some pictures in the booth and gave me the Flickr address to view them, so I am including that link to give you an inside glimpse of the show from one of our favorite author’s perspective.
At the show, I am lucky enough to walk the floor and this time I found something that knocked my socks off. And I wasn’t the only one. I stumbled upon a bead vendor, The Bead Goes On that was the talk of our authors and staff in the booth. Paula Nadelstern went wild over the beads; I had to tell Katie. This bead company had some of the most interesting beads I’ve ever seen. So, I did what any sensible shopper would do, I told my friends and we went and shopped on the last day of the show. Janet, Lynn and I found some beautiful beads, it was really hard to choose, but we all came away happy. My favorite beads were the tiny seed beads that were wrapped around a hollow core and were either ovals, squares or circles. So far I have made a Lariat for my sister, a necklace for my mom using the circle beads (see picture) and a necklace for my niece. I still have a few beads left and now I think I have been bitten by the beading bug. I can’t wait for spring market to see what new treasures I will discover.
Did you know that the maker behind our yummy Quilter’s Chocolates is actually Ghirardelli? Yes, it’s true. The famous chocolatier right from our own Bay Area backyard is the secret behind all the flavor in each little tin.
To sweeten things further, I just read in a recent issue of Something Extra, my local Raley’s grocery store magazine, that Ghirardelli is a manufacturer with high integrity. To quote Alyssa Lulie, the magazine’s Managing Editor,
Ghirardelli is highly involved in the World Cocoa Foundation, a grassroots organization that works with small cocoa farmers to help them learn better farming techniques, how to get a better price for their goods, and bring education and healthcare opportunities to their villages.”
It feels good to develop and offer our customers products with decent and humane values behind them. Makes the chocolate taste that much sweeter.
