Paper Crafter's Library — A world of creativity at your fingertips

Product Spotlight & Freebie Friday: Echo Park Yours Truly Collection…Enter to Win!

January 26, 2012 By Andrea Walford 133 Comments

This week’s Freebie Friday Give-Away is this gorgeous collection from Echo Park called “Yours Truly”. The collection kit comes with twelve 12 x 12 double sided patterned papers – one of which has cut apart journalling labels, titles and borders at the back. It also has a 12″ x 12″ element sticker sheet and a 12″ x 12″ alphabet sticker sheet.

For today’s Freebie Friday Video Tutorial, Tracy has created this fun card using paper and elements from the Yours Truly Collection:

Download the PDF handout here

You can watch Tracy’s video here:

In addition to the card, Tracy also created this adorable Yours Truly Valentine’s Tote. It measures 4 1/4″ wide by 4 1/2″ tall (not including the handle) – so you could wrap a small gift to place inside or of course fill it with treats – and who doesn’t like treats? This project features paper and elements from the Yours Truly Collection, some fun Baker’s twine from the Twinery and the handle was created using Spellbinder’s Nestabilities. The template is an original design by Tracy.

We have a video tutorial, the template and pdf handout available to our Paper Crafter’s Library members – please make sure you are loggin in first. If you’re not already a member, it’s worth checking out. As a member,along with our existing video library of over 700 videos, you’ll receive daily inspiration, great project ideas, fun techniques, instruction on how to use your products, and more! For more information and to join, click here.

Winner of Last Week’s Freebie Friday Kissing Booth Collection from Basic Gray

is………

Congratulations Carolyn! Please email us at customerservice@papercrafterslibrary.com to claim your prize! Be sure to put Freebie Friday Winner in the subject line, and include your phone number and shipping address in the body of the email!

How to enter this week’s giveaway:

All you have to do is leave us a comment in the comments section of this blog. Winner will be announced on Friday, February 3rd at the bottom of that Freebie Friday post!

Filed Under: 3D Projects, Cards, Echo Park, Give Aways

Makeover Monday Challenge #11: Inspired by Lisa Johnson

January 23, 2012 By Andrea Walford 11 Comments

Welcome to this week’s Makeover Monday challenge – a weekly challenge brought to you by the Paper Crafter’s Library and Sunny Stampin’ Studios. The purpose of Makeover Monday is to help you learn how to take the ideas and inspiration you find on the internet, and make it your own. This challenge is strictly a “work from your stash” challenge.

Every Monday we take a project we found on the internet, and show you our process for recreating it and making it our own, using supplies from our own stash.

This week’s inspiration piece was created by a paper artist we’ve introduced you to before – Lisa Johnson from Poppy Paperie. The card above – created by Tracy – was inspired by Lisa’s card below, and features products from Stampin’ Up!’s Twitterpated line, along with flowers from Prima, the label from Spellbinders, and a greeting from Hero Arts.

You can watch Tracy create the Makeover Monday Card below:

Here are the details on how you can participate in the Makeover Monday Challenge:

A new Makeover Monday Challenge & video will go up every Monday

Work from your own stash to create a project based on the inspiration project provided – you can use any products you would like, and make any type of project you like – card, scrapbook page, album, 3D item etc.
Post your project on your blog, in your gallery or on any other photo-hosting site (such as photobucket or flickr).
Click on our inLinkz button below to add a link to your project for our challenge
You will have until 7am, Monday, January 30th, to add your link to the list to be eligible to win. And you can enter as many times as you like.
One randomly selected winner will be chosen from ALL the entries on Monday, January 30th, in the afternoon.
The winner will be posted here. The randomly selected winner will win a grab bag filled with over $30 of spring-themed goodies.

Good luck to everyone and we look forward to seeing your projects!

Now before I go, it’s time to annouce the winner of last week’s Makeover Monday challenge……

But before I do, I want to thank everyone who participated, and encourage you to keep it up – it’s a fun way to develop your creative skills, and as our winner is randomly drawn – everyone has a chance to be a winner…

So…..Suzanne…..you are this week’s winner. You can see Suzanne’s card below, and visit her blog HERE.

Suzanne, please email us at customerservice@papercrafterslibrary.com to claim your prize. Be sure to put “Makeover Monday Winner” in the subject line, and in the body of the email please include your shipping address, email, and phone number

Filed Under: Latest News

Product Spotlight & Freebie Friday: Basic Grey Kissing Booth Collection….Enter to Win!

January 20, 2012 By Andrea Walford 386 Comments

Basic Grey has been one of my long-time favorite companies – I just love the way they add a distressed look to many of their products. So of course, when I saw their Kissing Booth line, I fell in love! This week we’re giving away a 6″ x 6″ paper pad that has 2 sheets each of 18 different patterns of paper – the pads are single sided, so there are 36 sheets in all. We also have a 6″ x 12″ sheet of cardstock stickers, a package of dimensional stickers, and a package that is chock full of cardstock and acetate elements.

For today’s Freebie Friday video tutorial, Tracy has created a super simple, but pretty card using one of the dimensional stickers as her focal point.

You can watch Tracy’s video below:

This next project shown I would have to say is probably one of my favorite albums that I have every created – I just LOVE how it turned out. It has a beautiful vintage feel with some office elements – both of which are popular trends right now. You may recognize many of the products used in the creation of this album as it was based on the Basic Grey Kissing Booth Collection – the paper, the cardstock stickers, and the cardstock/acetate elements. The tags are #8 manilla tags from Tim Holtz, and the metal embellishments (the 5 on the front and the charms that spell “family”) are from Tim Holtz’s Ideology line. The flowers, ribbons and trinkets come from Prima, Maya Road and Bazzill. The album itself was bound using my Zutter Bind-It-All. Really, it’s a little album that’s chock full of paper crafting goodness.

For our Paper Crafter’s Library members I filmed quite an intensive video that really walks you through my design process – essentially taking you “into my head” on how I design and teaching you tips and tricks to help you in your own designs. I’ve got some more close-up shots below. Here’s a closer view of the cover:

Here’s the first inside page of my oldest son Zachary who is 13.

Here’s a page about Joshua who is 11:

Here’s a page about Julia who is 8 and our little dog Ginger:

Here is a page about Matthew who is 5:

Here is a picture about Sammy, our 3 year old:

One of the things not shown in these pictures is the journalling for each. On the underside of the preceding page (the back of each tag), I painted with acrylic paint brush-strokes, and then journalled using a calligraphy pen dipped in black india ink.

If you’re not already a member, it’s worth checking out. As a member,along with our existing video library of over 700 videos, you’ll receive daily inspiration, great project ideas, fun techniques, instruction on how to use your products. For more information and to join, click here.

Winner of Last Week’s Freebie Friday Give-Away for our My Mind’s Eye Love Me Collection:

is………

Congratulations Darlene! Please email us at customerservice@papercrafterslibrary.com to claim your prize! Be sure to put Freebie Friday Winner in the subject line, and include your phone number and shipping address in the body of the email!

How to enter this week’s giveaway:

All you have to do is leave us a comment in the comments section of this blog. Winner will be announced on Friday, January 27th at the bottom of that Freebie Friday post!

Filed Under: Basic Gray, Bazzill, Book Binding, Cards, Family, Give Aways, Maya Road, Mixed-Media, Prima Marketing, Scrapbook Mini Albums, Tim Holtz Ideology

Creating Your Own Flocked Chipboard Letters & Some Valentine’s Projects

January 18, 2012 By Andrea Walford 3 Comments

This week in our Paper Crafter’s Library member area we’ve been continuing on with our Valentine’s Theme. Behind the scenes, with the release of our Makeover Monday Card, we also created a couple of videos for our members on Debossing With Stampin’ Up!’s Letterpress Plates and then a video on the Letterpress Technique Using Stampin’ Up! Letterpress plates.

Then yesterday, Tracy created this beautiful card, which used flocked chipboard letters for the main greeting.

Flocked Love You Card

Because not everyone has flocked letters on hand, we thought it would be fun to create a video showing how to make your own flocked letters using chipboard.

Finally, for today’s Paper Crafter’s Library Member post, we brought back one of our projects from the “A Touch of Romance” Valentine’s online class we ran a few years ago – it’s this cute mini album created out of glassine bags.

ATouchOfRomanceGrateful4YouMiniAlbum

So there you have it – a quick snapshot of some of the video tutorials our Paper Crafter’s Library members have enjoyed so far this week. If you’re looking for daily inspiration, great project ideas, fun techniques, instruction on how to use your products….you’ll find it all in our Paper Crafter’s Library member area!

Filed Under: Cards, Debossing, Flocking, Letterpress, Projects by Type, Scrapbook Mini Albums, Valentines

Makeover Monday Challenge #10: Inspired by Jessica Witty

January 16, 2012 By Andrea Walford 8 Comments

Welcome to this week’s Makeover Monday challenge - a weekly challenge brought to you by the Paper Crafter’s Library and Sunny Stampin’ Studios. The purpose of Makeover Monday is to help you learn how to take the ideas and inspiration you find on the internet, and make it your own. This challenge is strictly a “work from your stash” challenge.

Every Monday I take a project I found on the internet, and show you my process for recreating it and making it my own, using supplies from my own stash

This week’s project inspiration comes from the talented Jessica Witty. I first became away of Jessica’s blog via Nichole Heady’s blog when Jessica joined the Papertrey Ink design design team. I was immediately attracted to her clean style of stamping, and her innovative ideas in the way she uses paper crafting products. You can see her post that features the card below HERE.

You can watch my video on how I created this card below:

Here are the details on how you can participate in the Makeover Monday Challenge:

A new Makeover Monday Challenge & video will go up every Monday
Work from your own stash to create a project based on the inspiration project provided – you can use any products you would like, and make any type of project you like – card, scrapbook page, album, 3D item etc.
Post your project on your blog, in your gallery or on any other photo-hosting site (such as photobucket or flickr).
Click on our inLinkz button below to add a link to your project for our challenge
You will have until 7am, Monday, January 23rd, to add your link to the list to be eligible to win. And you can enter as many times as you like.
One randomly selected winner will be chosen from ALL the entries on Monday, January 23rd, in the afternoon.
The winner will be posted here. The randomly selected winner will win a grab bag filled with over $30 of spring-themed goodies.

Good luck to everyone and we look forward to seeing your projects!

Now before I go, it’s time to annouce the winner of last week’s Makeover Monday challenge……

So……Sara C….today is your lucky day! You can see Sara’s blog post HERE. And a close-up of Sara’s card below:

Sara, please email us at customerservice@papercrafterslibrary.com to claim your prize. Be sure to put “Makeover Monday Winner” in the subject line, and in the body of the email please include your shipping address, email, and phone number

Filed Under: Challenges

Product Spotlight & Freebie Friday: My Mind’s Eye Love Me Collection….Enter to Win & Last Week’s Winner

January 13, 2012 By Andrea Walford 334 Comments

Welcome to regular Freebie Friday Feature. Each Friday on the Paper Crafter’s Library Blog we spotlight a product that we’ve used and love, we show you some project ideas using that product (including a free video tutorial for one of the projects), and then, we do a give-away.

This week we’re spotlighting a fun collection by My Mind’s Eye called “Love Me”. It comes with 9 sheets of double-sided cardstock pper and 1 sheet of perforated elements. Among the many things I love about this collection is that along with the traditional reds and pinks of Valentine’s – it adds in an unexpected pop of color – the light blue. This is something that they do with many of their collections – throwing in one of more unexpected colors – and I LOVE IT! In this collection you’ll also see a number of trendy elements incorporated into the patterns – things like doilies, banners, vintage ads, bingo style, text, notebook paper etc.

For our free video we’re going to show you how to make this cute little “Be Mine” Valentine’s Treat Pouch created using paper from the Love Me collection.

You can see a close-up of the collection as well as watch a video tutorial on how the pouch was made here:

Download the PDF Handout HERE

Here are a couple of other projects using that collection which we’ve posted over the last few weeks. The first is this “Be My Valentine” card with a heart shaped window.

The next project is this U Rock card which is perfect for a teen:

Finally, there’s this smitten card, which I like because it’s not overtly feminine so it would be great for a guy:

All of these last three projects have video tutorials and pdfs available to our Paper Crafter’s Library members in our Video Library.

And, now finally, the winner of the last week’s Freebie Friday for the Fancy Pants Designs Love Story Collection:

And the winner is………………

Congratulations Ellen! We are so sorry for your loss and hope that this might bring a little smile to your face. To claim your prize please email us at customerservice@papercrafterslibrary.com.

My Mind’s Eye Love Me Collection Give-Away

In order to enter to win this collection please leave us a comment in the comments section of this post – we’d love to hear your thoughts on our blog, and what you’d love to see in this coming year! The winner for the Love Me collection will be drawn and announced next Friday!

Filed Under: 3D Projects, Give Aways, My Mind's Eye, Spellbinders, Valentines

Technique Thursday: Heat Embossing With Colored Embossing Powders and Heat Embossing with a VersaMarker

January 12, 2012 By Andrea Walford 2 Comments

Club52Week19Introduction

Every Thursday on Paper Crafter’s Library is Technique Thursday – it’s when we create and feature projects for our Club 52 online class (our year-long technique club), and for our Paper Crafter’s Library members. Although really, we probably should have called it Club 104 since each week we typically release two techniques every week LOL!

We’re now on week 19, having started back in September. One of the unique things about Club 52 is that we don’t just throw random techniques at you, instead we work in a “series” based on one medium – that way you really learn how to make the most of each medium that you own. So far, we’ve explored dye ink pads, dye ink refills and shimmer paints. Last week we moved on to embossing, with Week 18 (last week), exploring a few of the basic embossing techniques. This week we’re exploring embossing with colored embossing powders (the tag on the left), as well as selective embossing where you only emboss certain areas of an image. For example, in the tag on the right, in the greeting, only the word “sweet” is embossed.

If you’re interested in checking out what we’ve covered so far, you can look at our Club 52 page. If you’re a techique junkie and would like to learn new techniques (as many of them are ones we have created), or revisit old ones – you can still sign up from this page – you’ll be able to access all 19 weeks we’ve done so far, plus the remaining weeks, and your access to the classroom will last for 15 months.

Filed Under: Club 52 Technique Club, Embossing - Heat

Paper Crafter’s Library ONE YEAR OLD today! Try Us Out for 3 months!

January 11, 2012 By Andrea Walford 12 Comments

Last week when Tracy reminded me that Paper Crafter’s Library was coming up to it’s ONE YEAR birthday I was absolutely floored! It felt like it was not too long ago that we were popping the cork off of a bottle of champagne celebrating the launch of Paper Crafter’s Library….and here we are one year later.

In honor of our first birthday, Tracy designed this super cute birthday card featuring an adorable party hat with a bright and cheerful pom pom on top. The party hat template was designed by Tracy, and she used some fun Baker’s Twine to make the pom pom. We have a link to the videos for both posted to the Paper Crafter’s Library private member’s blog.

Of course what would a birthday be without presents?

In celebration of our birthday we would like to offer you a 3 Month Membership to Paper Crafter’s Library for the ONE TIME, super-low price of only $29.95 – that’s a 50% savings over the regular membership price!

If you’ve been wanting to join Paper Crafter’s Library, NOW is the time to do it – you have until Sunday, January 15th 11:59 pm EST to take advantage of this ONE time offer. ETA (Jan 16, 2011) - This is offer has now expired

If you are already a subscriber of Paper Crafter’s Library, then we have a special birthday gift for you too!

Each month, for the next 3 months (January / Feburary / March), you will receive an email with a link to an exclusive video tutorial (valued at ~$14.95 – $19.95 each). These tutorials will not be placed in the PCL video library and will not be available to the new members taking advantage of our one time birthday offer.

This month’s gift is this EXCLUSIVE Paper Crafter’s Library 1st Birthday Party Hat Mini Scrapbook Album. So if you are already a Paper Crafter’s Library subscriber, then please keep your eye on your email inbox for your first free gift.

We thank you once again for your support of Paper Crafter’s Library!

Filed Under: Birthday, Cards, Echo Park, Latest News, Scrapbook Mini Albums, Specials, The Twinery

Snow Day Treat Box

January 10, 2012 By Andrea Walford 2 Comments

Isn’t this box adorable? It stands about 4″ high and at it’s widest it’s approximately 2″ – giving you lots of room to fill it with treats. I actually have it filled with the Lindt Chocolate Balls and I think it ended up fitting somewhere between 6 to 8 of them (can’t remember because I may have eaten a couple along the way LOL).

The box was decorated with paper and elements from the Pink Paislee Snow Day collection – one of my absolute fave’s! I love it because you can use it for winter-themed projects, or as shown here, for Valentine’s themed projects (this one will probably go to my sweetie one I top up the chocolates). You’ll be seeing more using this collection since we included it in the box of goodies we’re sending to our DT members. The box template is an original design.

This video tutorial, pdf handout and exclusive template were uploaded to the Paper Crafter’s Library for members (that’s why we keep tellin’ ya – there are tons of benefits to being a member!).

Filed Under: 3D Projects, Pink Paislee, Valentines

Makeover Monday Challenge #9: Inspired by Heather Nichols

January 9, 2012 By Andrea Walford 16 Comments

Welcome back to our Make Over Monday Challenge – our first one for 2012!

For those of you that may be new to our Makeover Monday challenge, it’s a weekly challenge brought to you by the Paper Crafter’s Library and Sunny Stampin’ Studios. The purpose of Makeover Monday is to help you learn how to take the ideas and inspiration you find on the internet, and make it your own. This challenge is strictly a “work from your stash” challenge.

Over the last 7 years of teaching in the paper crafting industry, I’ve noticed that many of my students feel like they have to run out and buy the exact same products I used, rather than looking to their own stash to see if they having something that might work instead.

Now I’ll be the first to admit, shopping for paper crafting supplies is fun, and I certainly do my share of it, but why spend your money on a product that may be similar to what you already have?………………and that’s where the concept for Makeover Monday was born.

Every Monday I take a project I found on the internet, and show you my process for recreating it and making it my own, using supplies from my own stash.

This week’s Makeover Monday inspiration piece shown below comes from Heather Nichols – like many of the other paper artists I’ve taken inspiration from in my previous Makeover Monday Challenge posts, I’ve been following Heather for a long time – she’s very a very talented crafter with a gorgeous rustic style. You can see her card (shown below) in her post on her “Pine Is Here” Blog.

You can watch the video below on how I made my card:

Here are the details on how you can participate in the Makeover Monday Challenge:

A new Makeover Monday Challenge & video will go up every Monday
Work from your own stash to create a project based on the inspiration project provided – you can use any products you would like, and make any type of project you like – card, scrapbook page, album, 3D item etc.
Post your project on your blog, in your gallery or on any other photo-hosting site (such as photobucket or flickr).
Click on our inLinkz button below to add a link to your project for our challenge
You will have until 7am, Monday, January 16th, to add your link to the list to be eligible to win. And you can enter as many times as you like.
One randomly selected winner will be chosen from ALL the entries on Monday, January 16th, in the afternoon.
The winner will be posted here. The randomly selected winner will win a grab bag filled with over $30 of spring-themed goodies.