The mood at your next Halloween shindig won’t be “grave” when your guests see these hauntingly fun treat bags! Our Tombstone Place Cards, which are great for marking the seats of your un-dead guests, also work boo-tifully tucked into our small cellophane bags filled with treats as Halloween party favors!

–Annie
PS colors: peacock & paper bag
Latest fave: Spritzer Rubber Stamp Cleaner and Rubber Stamp Cleaning Pad

Materials needed:
How to PDF
Small Cellophane Bags Read the rest of this entry »

It’s so much fun for us to find good ideas using Paper Source products (things we had not thought of)! This bride, featured on marthastewartweddings.com had a very clever use for our Academic Grid Calendar. Enjoying sending birthday cards to friends and family, she asked that her wedding guests write their birthdays onto the calendar. Such a wonderful way to keep in touch and show you care!

photo courtesy of marthastewartweddings.com

– Cindy
PS colors: persimmon & paper bag
Latest fave: 2011 Paper Source Booklet Calendar

Needle felting is a fun crafting technique that gets a little less of the spotlight than others. But there are endless possibilities to what you can make, once you know the basics. I learned this new technique making a soft sculpture using the beginners needle felting kit (Flower Felting Pin Kit). Then I transferred the knowledge into making a small family of birds. (But you can take this idea and craft whatever creature you like.)

Once I completed felting the birds, I found a piece of driftwood from the shoreline, and crafted a swing, simply by braiding pieces of string to each end. When the swing was assembled, the birds were then glued onto the piece of wood with PVA glue. And voila!…a cute family of birds who smell great!

That’s right, they smell ‘tweet’. One thing I’ve noticed about felt is that it holds smells very well. Simply spray or drop your favorite perfume/potpourri into the larger felt birds, and you’ve got yourself an adorable air freshener, as well as bragging rights. Hang it in your bathroom, car rear view mirror, or off your neck! Wherever it dwells, it has tweet smells.

–Minhi, Paper Source Bellevue Store
PS colors: moss & curry
Latest fave: I Can’t Sleep Journal

These fun square favor boxes – made using the Martha Stewart Scoring Board – are perfect for tucking in yummy Halloween treats!

Here are a few of my classic 1, 2, 3… steps for making these spooktacular little boxes using our Halloween Witches 12×12 Paper (or try the text weight wrapping paper if you have lots of favors to make).

Step 1: Trim your top and bottom papers to 8″ x 8″. To make these 4″ x 4″ x 2″ square boxes we used the witch 12″ x 12″ and black 8.5″ x 11″ cover papers. You can make different sized mini boxes – simply flip the little lid up on the scoring board for easy to follow measuring guides (see above). Read the rest of this entry »

I love gifting.

I enjoy the challenge of finding something that fits the recipient’s interests, something they would not expect you to know.

I revel in the surprise of giving something so perfectly them.

With this also comes an aversion to gift cards. But two of the most creative people I know are tying the knot [today] and The Mister and I wanted to give gifts they could personalize, forcing me to compromise on my stringent gifting rule.

With a little help from my stockpile of Paper Source goods (yes, I had all of this), I infused our usual thoughtful nature into the presentation, whipping up a gift which celebrates the couple’s worldly interests. If you’re going to give a gift card, at least consider some creative packaging!

– Liz
PS colors: night & curry
Latest fave: Cavallini Wrapping Paper

Materials used: Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever feel nostalgic for those sticker collections of early childhood, then let me introduce you to my new crafty best friend, the Xyron Create A Sticker. It brings back memories of carefree days and transforms all sorts of beautiful paper into stickers I can use for grown-up things like cards, files, books, and other craft projects. Recently, I found an even more practical use for my Xyron – making labels! This is not your mother’s old one-font label maker – you can print any font, shape, and color that you want, turn it into a sticker, and label to your heart’s content.

I used my newfound labeling skills to spruce up the envelopes for a friend’s bridal shower invitations. The wrap-around address labels were the finishing touch that the invitations needed to make them look complete and professionally crafted. It was all courtesy of my Xyron, a little imagination, and Read the rest of this entry »

We love these easy Halloween decorations for doorways and hallways. Our tissue paper pomettes (mini pom-poms) can be done in any color for any occasion – here the combination of black and poppy adds a touch of Halloween flair. Spooky fun!

–Annie
PS colors: peacock & paper bag
Latest fave: Spritzer Rubber Stamp Cleaner and Rubber Stamp Cleaning Pad

Materials needed:
How to PDF
Tissue Paper (black & poppy)
Black Linen Thread
Scissors

Instructions:
1. Cut tissue papers to approximately 3″ X 5″. Create a mix of black and poppy, all black and all poppy pomettes.
2. Stack 6 sheets per pomette (diagram A). Make 1/2” accordion folds with each stack (diagram B). Cut points at both ends of tissue (diagram C).
3. Tie centers with 6” pieces of thread (diagram D). Carefully pull ends of each layer towards knot to fluff up the pomettes.
4. String up one long length of thread where you want your decor to hang and attach tissue pomettes.

For this blog entry I wanted to focus on some of my favorite new kids gifts! One item that I like simply for its cute design and Japanese aesthetic is the Momiji doll. The new ones for fall are Snuggle (with the mushroom hat) and Happy Birthday (with the adorable pigtails and a cake for you!). These sweet little dolls are collectible and have a hole in the bottom where a child can store secrets or place special notes for friends. It’s a whole new way to pass notes in class.

A favorite around here are the sound machines. We have a lot of fun in the office with these, playing the bomb dropping sound when someone bombs a joke or the “re re re” knife stabbing sound when we’re dealing with a difficult situation such as… well, a completely new computer system. The sound machines come in three styles: classic, cartoon and horror, just in time for Halloween. You could have a lot of fun scaring trick-or-treaters, hiding in the porch shadows with the Spooky Sound Machine.

Another personal favorite is the Monster Balloon. This thing gets huge! It can be inflated to over 3 feet in diameter and is seriously mesmerizing for kids and adults alike. It’s made in the US from completely biodegradable latex, and is a great lung workout for whoever gets the treat of blowing it up! What fun they would be inflated with helium in clusters for a party like this pic!

Now that the new school year has started kids will need some things to keep them entertained, besides just Silly Bandz and Japanese erasers – hopefully some of these great kids gifts will do the trick.

–Lindsay, PS Buying Team
PS colors: beet & peacock
Latest fave: Pretty Aprons

In grad school I fell in love with “George”! He was older – a bit outdated for his time; he weighed 1200 lbs and smelled of inks and solvent. None of that mattered – George and I had a love-hate relationship from the start. To everyone else he was known as the Vandercook Universal. My romance with George included tediously hand setting tiny 10pt. lead type, adding even smaller brass and copper spacers, along with leading lines for sentences and breaks, etc.; chases locked (often “pied” when dropped on accident – heavy sigh!) with wood furniture. We had many long nights together, til the wee hours of the morning, with loud music and the smell of damp paper in the air. Yes, with this level of commitment and attention to George, everything letterpress, from that point on, was a thing to behold!

Here is a young “George” in a rare shot, all cleaned up for a photo! Next to him is the new lightweight at home letterpress machine, and what I might refer to as Mr. Epic!

But, alas not all love affairs can last… Read the rest of this entry »