{capture the moment}

Senior DT Challenge: Crazy About Color Couture

It's that special time of the month again!  Time for the next Senior Design Team Challenge!  This month I thought it would be so fun to focus on one of our newest product line additions, Color Couture.  

You can find the entire Color Couture Collection in our store, HERE.

It is an amazing resource that allows you to create projects with ease and provide you as an endless desktop resource for inspiration.  I don't know about you, but I LOVE things like this that I can keep at my fingertips!

The following information is paraphrased from a big blog post I did in May that went into the details of the Color Couture line-up, which you can read in it's entirety HERE.

 

Here is what this cute little binder looks like with the first set (Volumes 1-3) and the new second set (Volumes 4-6) of pages look like assembled all together in the binder. The binder measures 9" x 7.5" so it has a relatively small footprint and is easy to store. Totally takes me to a happy place to see all that goodness together in one spot!

 This is a close-up of a single section in the binder.

 Here's an example of what the first part of a volume looks like.  You'll notice that the Color Swatch Divider is a bit taller than the other pages so that you can easily flip to any given section and browse all the color combinations with ease.

 When you flip the Color Swatch Divider over, you will have the Embellishment pages using those colors ready to cut out and use.  There are five (yes, FIVE) Embellishment pages for each volume, with each page featuring several different elements that you can use for your projects.  I think they're fun to use as a quick jumping point because once you select one to use, all you need to pull out is the coordinating cardstock and perhaps a bit of ribbon to create a quick and easy project!

 The third portion for a volume is a set of THREE Inspiration Pages, each featuring a full-color project, supply list and complete instructions.  There is one project each from Dawn herself, Betsy Veldman and Melissa Phillips in each and EVERY volume!  That means with the purchase of one collection (which contains three volumes) you get a whooping NINE project ideas using the very embellishments that you also receive in the package!

 For those of you that are always requesting a Papertrey Idea Book, this is an excellent resource that gives you so many points of reference!  And don't forge that this is an ongoing series!  A new printed collection will be introduced once each quarter, with the other two months of the quarter bringing you inexpensive downloadable materials to add to your binder for even more inspiration!

 

I keep my binder sitting right next to my ink pad storage on my table top so I can grab it and use it as inspiration whenever I am stuck.  This is a fantastic product line that Dawn has invested lots of thought and time into and I know that anyone who purchases this will be so incredibly glad they did!

Now, how about I show you some AMAZING projects that the team has created using the Color Couture Collection!

CLICK HERE to read more from Betsy Veldman.

  CLICK HERE to read more from Dawn McVey.

CLICK HERE to read more from Heather Nichols.

 

CLICK HERE to read more from Lisa Johnson.

CLICK HERE to read more from Michelle Wooderson.

I hope you thoroughly enjoyed yourself as you got the opportunity to peruse through all of these fabulous projects.  We have received such wonderful feedback from all of our customers that have purchased the Color Couture line-up.  This post will give you much more inspiration to use with your purchase or perhaps give you the little nudge you needed to add it to your collection if you do not already own it.  Thanks for stopping by today!  Happy stamping! 
 

Papertrey Ink June 2010 Blog Hop

First of all, I want to welcome everyone to the June 2010 Papertrey Ink Blog Hop!  It is so exciting to see so many of you here!

  

This month's blog hop is all about color! We want to see all of your favorite Papertrey color combinations!  So your challenge is to create a project using your favorite combination, listing the colors at the top of your post so it will be easy for people to collect schemes and make lists.

I have included a Mister Linky list below for you to add your link to your felt project. You have until 11:30pm EST tonight (June 25th) to add your link to this list. THREE random participants will be selected to win a FREE Papertrey Ink stamp set of their choice and announced over in the Papertrey Ink forum tomorrow morning (June 26th) by Jennifer Ellefson since I am on vacation. We look forward to seeing all of your projects! And good luck to everyone!

June Blog Hop Tonight!

Tonight we are excited to present the BIG monthly Blog Hop that Papertrey Ink hosts for all of it's talented customers to show off their skills! We are doing things a bit different again this month with the link list being hosted here on my blog at 8pm EST with a Mister Linky list, rather than a thread on our forum for that purpose. But not to worry, the contest for non-participants as well as all the chit chat will still be going on over in our forum in the designated thread. I hope that I will see many of your familiar faces over here tonight! I look forward to seeing all of your creativity!

All of our customers who enjoy sharing inspiration & artwork with their peers through their personal blogs.

 

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The actual Blog Hop will take place tonight, June 25th, beginning @ 8pm EST.

 

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You will explore individual blogs through a thread HERE on my blog beginning at 8pm EST tonight.

 

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 An evening dedicated to seeking inspiration through projects utilizing Papertrey Ink products.

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This month's blog hop is all about color! We want to see all of your favorite Papertrey color combinations!  So your challenge is to create a project using your favorite combination, listing the colors at the top of your post so it will be easy for people to collect schemes and make lists.
 -Bloggers will post their projects on their individual blogs between 5pm EST and 7:55pm EST. The title of your post should be "Papertrey June Blog Hop Challenge".

-Participating bloggers need post a link to their project in the post labeled "June Blog Hop" that will begin at 8pm EST on my blog. (no pre-registration is required). A Mister Linky list will be included at the bottom of the post, and this is where you will need to add your link in order to be qualified.

-Customers & participants alike can peruse all of the links and absorb all of the amazing inspiration that will be shared!

-After you have made your way through the list, simply return to our forum and participate in all of the fun!

-You can chit chat with everyone in the Blog Hop forum! Take this time to praise your peers efforts, discuss anything new you might have learned and which projects really offered something unique!

-The three random blogger participant winners will be announced at midnight EST on our forum and highlighted here on my blog!

-You can enter our Blog Hop Forum contest. There will be a special thread posted in our forum specifically for this purpose asking a question. Please only post once, as the winner will be picked via the Random Number Generator. The forum contest will end at midnight EST and the winner announced tomorrow morning at the thread.

-Create a project while you are here, using the new inspiration you have gathered from the Blog Hop. You can post your projects in the gallery, even if you do not have a blog! We are looking forward to all the fun tonight and we hope to see you there!

In case you were wondering, I am away on vacation right now enjoying time with my family. I thought I would share a few photos of some highlights of the trip so far!

 
We made a stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania at the Hershey Gardens.  All of the roses were blooming and the weather happened to be spectacular the day that we stopped by.

 
A photo of Hannah outside of the park.

 
Owen enjoying a little down time.

 
Ethan at Hershey's Chocolate world after filling his toolbox with Hershey Kisses!  Isn't he so cute in his little hard hat.

 
Owen & Hannah shaking hands with the bobcat from the zoo.

   

And here the kids are with David on one of the rides, together on Father's Day.  They had such a good time!  We are in Maine now and enjoying the cool weather.  I hope to update you with more pictures a bit later on in the week! 

CHA News

Have you all heard the news?  Papertrey Ink selects one customer event per year to participate in, and this summer we are coming to Chicago for the CHA Craft SuperShow!  This will be our second year (you can read about last year's event HERE) and 2010 will be even bigger and better for Papertrey Ink, along with all it's loyal customers!

The CHA Craft Super Show will take over a two-day period, July 30th-31st.  The hours of the dhow are 12pm-8pm on Friday (July 30th) and 10am-6pm on Saturday (July 31st).

This amazing event will take place at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago.

The CHA Craft Supershow is an amazing craft retail & educational event, which is open to the public.  Companies & stores from all facets of the craft industry attend providing shopping and workshops.  Not just paper crafting is represented, making it a wonderfully eclectic experience for everyone.  You can see a complete floor plan of the show as well as some of the other vendors that are attending HERE.

Tickets can be purchased in advance for the show HERE.  Or you can buy them at the door.

Papertrey Ink specifically is just providing a retail experience.  We will not be introducing any new products, just a fun way to see & touch everything in person and even meet the team behind the scenes.

We have provided a list of what we will be bringing along to to sell in our retail booth, per customer request, so that you may plan your purchases in advance.  This list can be accessed HERE.

For every $100 spent in our booth during this two-day event, you will earn a FREE exclusive CHA stamp set that has a retail value of $15.  This set will never be available for sale, so it is truly a special gift that you can treasure for years to come and use to make yourself pretty little things!

We are allowing proxy shopping, so if you know someone who is attending, they can make purchases on your behalf to earn you a free set.  

There are no rules or regulations as to how many free sets a person can earn.  If you spend $100, you'll get one free CHA exclusive set... $200 equals two sets... etc...

With every purchase, you also receive a complimentary Papertrey tote bag to carry your purchases home in.  Not only are these bags eco-friendly, but cute & trendy too!

We will be hosting two FREE make n' takes each day, four different projects total over the course of the two-day event.  Both projects scheduled for a particular day will be operating ALL day, so everyone will have a chance to create all the projects.  

An amazing array of hundreds of projects will be on display throughout the interior AND exterior of our booth, so be sure to bring your camera!  Not only will we have some never before seen projects using the exclusive CHA stamp set, but many of the projects you have seen right here on the blogs during various countdowns will appear as well!

Besides myself, Julie and Jane, the three musketeers who started this crazy ride we call Papertrey Ink, five of our team members graciously agreed to come along to help us out!  Jennifer Ellefson, everyone's favorite forum friend, will be in attendance helping Julie, Jane & I with the booth's retail area.

 

Meanwhile, I'm happy to announce that these ladies will be running the make n' take portion of our booth!  

• Debbie Olson
  
• Dawn McVey
  
• Michelle Wooderson
  
• Heather Nichols

They will be showing you the way as you create the four FREE projects we have lined up for you throughout the two days!  And since we know you like to get personal, the make n' takes will wrap up one hour before the close of the show each night and you will have the opportunity to get autographs and take photos with the team!

As you can see, it will be a jam-packed event full of friends, fun & laughter (and of course lots of stamping).  We look forward to seeing many of you there!

the Morning After...

As I've said in the past, one of my favorite things to do the morning after a release is to get the opportunity to see what all of the team members have created with the new sets.  I've happily clicked through all of their marvelous creations and I thought I would pop in and share a few of my favorites with you!

 

Betsy Veldman created this stunning card using the new Flutterby Friend set.  I love the softness of the color scheme, all of the different textures she added and the way she playfully integrated the butterflies throughout the piece.  It's hard to believe she used the same exact butterfly images for both her focal points and the background.  Such an amazing card!

 

Dawn McVey used the Mini Scrapbook Series: Library Ledger paired with a few older sets to make this fun card.  Did you notice she used the new Library Card Page Die to create her card base?  Just a little stitching across the top and a ribbon through the holes, and you are ready to go!  Other stamp sets that Dawn incorporated were Get to the Point Sentiments, Star Prints and the new Night, Night Moon!  Not to mention that the background paper is from the new Library Ledger pad!

 

Debbie Olson showcased Year of Flowers: Roses in the most breath-takingly way possible.  Couldn't you just stare at this card for hours?   I know I could!  Debbie did some paper piecing with this bloom, but added a bit of sophisticated shading using Copic markers.  I love the addition of the faint script overlaid on the rose along with the other million and one special touches she added to make this project spectacular!

 

Erin Lincoln created this special baby card using the new Flutterby Friends, paired with Fillable Frames #5 and a sentiment from Baby Button Bits.  I love how simplistic she kept everything, but yet the project is far from bland.  I find that the touch of satin ribbon just makes it thoroughly stunning.  Definitely a "must try" moment for me.  I'm thinking that there are oodles of sentiments that would work well within that frame and be cohesive with these images.

 

Heather Nichols used the new All About You to created this soft, understated project.  I love how she stamped the Fillable Frames #5 stamp first, added a die-cut mask, then stamped her flowers.   Once you remove the mask, I am sure it's just like magic, revealing all that hidden beauty!

 

Kim Hughes showcased Tea for Two Additions in this hip & modern way, something I hadn't seen done with it before.  I love the colors she chose along with the different directions she rotated the cups in. Just a fabulous sense of style that can be recreated in so many ways.

 

Lisa Johsnon created this cream & red concoction with her new Fluttery Friend set, paired up with A Little Argyle.  One of my favorite design details of hers are the small knots of rustic twine around the center of the Mat Stack 1 frame.  It adds just the right little something without being too much.  

 

Maile Belles used Flutterby Friend as well.  I love how she created the single panel of Simple Chartreuse towards the left.  I love the floss tied around this, the pop of the white heat embossing, But most of all, the way she cut the butterfly in half and then put it back together on top of one another to make it look as though they are a couple.

 

Melissa Phillips showcased Tea for Two Additions as well.  I love the mat she was able to create with felt along with our Mat Stack 1 die.  The sweet little cross-stiched corners are just the right detail.    And what's not to love about a delicate paper doily, such as this?!

 

Michelle Wooderson created this amazing project and is so good, you can almost smell the tea brewing.  I love the way she colored everything, the way she incorporated the Moroccan Motifs.  The strips of patterned paper across each teacup.  All of it is just fabulous!

By the way, be sure to check out the amazing NEW project Michelle added to her blog yesterday using her new Friendship Jar set, if you haven't already seen it!

 

Niki Estes used All For You here.  I love the cleanness  & the boldness of the center panel.  Green is a fantastic color to pair up with floral sets, because it makes a natural background.  I also love the glaze she has added to the flower center . Very realistic!

Aren't these all just SO inspiring?  Sigh... makes me want to dive right back into the studio and get inky again!  I hope you're feeling just as inspired as I am and decide to get creative today!  Thank you for stopping by!  Enjoy the rest of your day!