Video courtesy of Chronicle Books

Authors Eunice and Sabrina Moyle, founders of Hello!Lucky, along with stylist Shana Faust, combined their expertise to create one of our favorite DIY books, Handmade Weddings. To celebrate the bountiful inspiration of this new book and video, we are partnering with Chronicle Books for a special DIY event.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, June 4 from 1:00 – 3:00pm and join us for A Midsummer’s Eve Affair, happening at all Paper Source store locations. Sign up and enjoy making a wonderful collection of make and take projects, while enjoying refreshments and participating in raffles throughout the day.

While we continue to prepare for what will be our biggest event of the year, we wanted to kick start the DIY enthusiasm with a special giveaway. Comment to this post with your best hostess advice or favorite hostess gift and one lucky Paper Source fan will receive a free copy of Handmade Weddings.

The winner will be selected at random on Monday, April 25th.

We’re feeling lucky because our new shade of Clover arrived just in time for St. Patrick’s Day! Now you can create fun stationery or festive decor with our newest green in solid papers and envelopes.

This happy green answers a frequent customer request for something vibrant and true. Mix with Sunshine and Strawberry for a summertime party. Combine with Beet or Peacock for a rich wedding palette. Or go earthy with shades Cement, Gravel and a hit of bright Clover. It’s a fresh accent for weddings, baby showers, birthday parties or a tribute to Ireland.

So in the spirit of the season, we’d like to celebrate the arrival of Clover with an “Éirinn go Brách!” Won’t you join us?

Like the little black dress that sits in your closet, we’ve found the little black (or white) gift offers the same reliability and versatility. So, in addition to a springtime ode to daisies, we’ve compiled a beautiful assortment of black and white products.

Read the rest of this entry »

You serve them on a cheese tray, mix them in yogurt, and bundled them tightly with bacon – yum! And now you can whip up deliciously beautiful paper creations with our new Fig solid papers and envelopes.

Rich and luxurious, this deep hue will inspire romance and accentuate modern design. Combine with Gravel for a classic wedding invitation suite. Accent your summertime dinner party with Fig and Peacock place settings. Or celebrate your travels through the markets of Marrakesh with Fig and Persimmon stationery.

It’s a wonderful addition to our assortment of colors.

Not sure if Fig accurately represents your true colors? Let the new Paper Source Colorscope guide you to creative success.

As far as lyrics go, this one is about the most perfect line you could apply to life…“All you need is Love!” And, while we often think this famous Beatles tune is merely a phrase pulled from the song, I hope the following story will inspire you to reconsider the power of a few well chosen words of love.

Recently I mentioned to Hayley, Head of Visual Merchandising at Paper Source, that my dad once stuck a Post-it note to my mom which read, “I love you ~ Bob,” and recalling this simple declaration of love still melts my heart. In return, she shared the sweetest story with me about her nephew, from when he was only a handful of years old. The story goes like this (forgive the paraphrasing for blog sake):

“When my nephew was very young, maybe 3 or 4 years old, he had already learned to read and write, but he was shy about talking. One time, while visiting my sister, he came into the kitchen where we were having a conversation. We looked up and noticed he had a sticky note attached to him, which read, “feed me.” We chuckled, made him a sandwich, and he left the room. A little while later he came back into the kitchen with another note attached to him that read, “hug me.” My sister and I delivered loving hugs, and he turned and left the room. Now, about 20 minutes passed, and he returned to the kitchen doorway again. This time he had a note attached to him that simply read, “love me.”

At this point in her story I felt myself fill up with such emotion that I had to choke back a tear. It was such a great story– so simple, so powerful, so poignant. It reminded me that if I do nothing else in life, I need to put a pen to paper and scribble out my own words of love! Or capture a story like this one to tuck into a book to share.

Perhaps some of you have touching stories which inspired a project? Are there small moments, like this one, where love was all you needed to write, draw, or create? Tell us about your small moments of inspiration.

Signed…the hopeless romantic,

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

We recently noticed that many PS bloggers list their favorite PS colors as Persimmon & Paper Bag. It’s true! These new colors have quickly found their way into many of our craft projects & product designs. Persimmon, bold, happy and bright, tempered by the earthiness of Paper Bag. It’s a cheerful, down-to-earth combination.

Inspired by the suggestion, I headed to our new Southport store and soon found myself with the beginnings of a card-making idea…Persimmon folded cards, Paper Bag business cards, Paper Bag envelopes and Lokta paper to line the envelopes. Hoping to find the rest of my materials in my paper scrap box (full disclosure: closet), I headed home. Read the rest of this entry »

We reached out to you recently for guest blogger submissions and received many great stories about how you use your favorite crafting essentials. We’re thrilled to introduce our first guest blogger, Andrea Boudewijn, whose creative inspiration is simply delicious! Here’s her story:

Hi PS Fans! My name is Andrea Boudewijn and I’m a baker of wedding cakes and confections who loves to shop at Paper Source in Pasadena and Beverly Hills. As a cake maker, I’ve often looked to Paper Source for tools I can use on my cakes. I know what you’re thinking: What could a paper store offer that could be used at a bakery? More than you can imagine. Everything in the shop is an opportunity to get a creative edge on my cakes, but today I want to talk about a tool I reach for and use every single day: The bone folder.

If you’ve used one, you likely know its primary purpose: To aid in the clean, precise creasing of hand made notecards, origami, and other projects needing paper-folds. But in the shop, we use the comfortable, slightly-rounded face of this tool to smooth and heal our fondant and gum paste. The comfortable grip, organic feel and convenient shape allow us to rub out wrinkles, tuck fondant under a cake tier for a clean line, and on occasion texture the surface!

Once we have the fondant and gum paste smooth and perfect, we dig into our collection of PS rubber stamps to decorate. It makes an image so much more precise to use a stamp (with edible food coloring, of course!) then paint over or around it for the desired effect. We also use them in a repeated pattern to create unique texture on our cakes. It takes a steady hand and lots of math to get it exactly right, but that’s our kind of everyday creativity.

photo credit: Andrea Bricco

When we’re doing a suite of confections (‘sweet’ of confections? Blerrrg…), we love to Read the rest of this entry »

Update 6/9/10 – Congrats to Terri from Dearborn Heights, Michigan – our blog “birthday party” winner!

Put on your party hats – our blog is celebrating its 1st birthday and you could win a $100 Paper Source gift card! One full year of creative inspiration, how-to projects, store events, and more. We’re thrilled with the way things have shaped up and are so thankful to YOU for stopping by periodically to see what we’re up to.

We wanted to celebrate this occasion by sharing some of our (and your) favorite blog posts from our very first year.

5 steps to perfect rubber stamping
How-to: recycled origami hearts
Decorate your office with birthday banners!
Founder’s Day
A baby shower gift worth drooling over
Rubber stamping on chalkboards?!
How-to: bookworm baby shower invitation
Lovely paper jewelry
How-to: sweet treat keepsake
Rubber stamping with powdered sugar

Now we want to hear from you! What keeps you coming back to our blog…what types of things would you like to see more of…what new things can we bring to the blog? Share your thoughts and ideas as comments to this blog post. And because it’s a celebration, we’re going to give someone a $100 Paper Source gift card just for coming to our “party.” (Next week, we’ll choose at random someone from the comments to this post as our winner.)

Stay tuned! We have wonderful ideas and news to share right around the corner…three new PS colors, great ideas for 4th of July celebrations, our 2011 calendar lineup, keen new fall kits, and new store openings coast to coast!

P.S. To receive email updates about new blog entries, just click “Blog updates by E-mail” under subscribe in the right hand navigation.

–PS Team

At this time of year, we at Paper Source are reminded of how blessed we are to be surrounded by inspiring ideas every day. We recently had our annual office Holiday Party. To get everyone in the holiday spirit, we asked team members from around the organization to design placemats to be used at each table. It started with a simple piece of 12” x 12” cover stock in either pool or red. We asked each person to create a place setting aligned to the corner. The last step was to attach four squares together with double-sided tape to make a “cloth” for each table of four.

While this is a super fun idea for kids; I’m here to tell you, it’s a fun idea for anyone who is young at heart. Our office had a blast coming up with creative ideas. We had nearly 100 completely unique settings, which created a stunning effect. Read the rest of this entry »