TAYLORED EXPRESSIONS OCTOBER 2012 RELEASE DAY!

Hi friends! It's been such a fun week already…and today is Release Day! What do you think of all the new goodies in the TE store? Aren't they wonderful!? All of the new Taylored Expressions products are now available in the Fresh Out of the Oven Department. AND Be sure to check the TE Current Specials page! 

Today I have a trio of note cards to share made with the new Graphic Greetings Christmas stamp. Taylor is continuing this Graphic Greetings series and I'm so glad. This look is so on trend right now in the craft world. The Baker's Dozen gals have come up with some great ideas for this stamp…so many possibilities!

I wanted to show you guys how this card could look in different colors. Christmas doesn't have to always be red and green! LOL. I think these would be great gal pal Christmas cards, because they're fun and feminine. I kept them flat for mailing too.

The snowflakes were made using a new TE Die set called Make a Snowflake…and there are six snowflakes included. You can layer them endlessly and they coordinate perfectly with the new Snowflake Border Die too.

First I stamped my image in Versamark ink and clear embossed it. Then I colored my image with Distress inks and a sponge in the pretty colors. Next, I went back around and distressed the edges with a touch of brown ink. This adds just a touch of depth. Then I had fun layering on pretty cream snowflakes!

The background solid color paper was first embossed with the Swirls side of the TE Swirls and Music impression plate which was released last year for Christmas. I use that all the time!

Do you like these pretty pastels for Winter?

Here are our links for Release Day!

Carolyn King – Guest Designer

Charmaine Ikach

Jen Shults

Jodi Collins

Karen Giron

Melody Rupple

Regina Mangum

Sankari Wegman

Shannon White

Shelly Mercado

Stephanie Kraft

Taylor VanBruggen

Wanda Guess

Hi Everyone! It's sneak peeks week at Taylored Expressions! Let the fun begin!  We have inspiration to share Tuesday through Friday.  All of the new products will be available for purchase on Thursday, October 4th at 8 am PST. You'll find it all in the Fresh out of the Oven Department at the Taylored Expressions Store.You also can join us as a fan on Facebook for an early peek at the stamp sets, as well as a SPECIAL Facebook GIVEAWAY, on Wednesday night beginning at approximately 6 pm PST.  

Okay, so like yesterday, there's a whole LOT of Christmas going on here! I have two more projects to share today using more new October release items. I'm so excited about this release – it's wonderful. I hope you find something (or many things) this week to inspire you for your winter crafting!

The first card for today is so happy and bright. I used the new 'Carta Bella Merry and Bright' Project Pantry Kit which has the prettiest shade of pink in it. Love this one. I used every color! LOL. The papers are 6×6 so the scale is just perfect.

The stamp set is called Very Merry, and it is indeed! Very Merry is a full size set from the Whimsical Wishes Collection. This stamp set comes WITH A DIE of the word "merry" which combines with the sentiments. (I used the merry die yesterday). The cute solid images are great for stampers who prefer not to do a lot of coloring.

I also used the Very Merry Outlines and Scallops TE Dies to cut out the super fun mittens on my card. There is a die to coordinate with all the images, and you can buy the solid image, the scallop layer image or both! Check it out!

My teeny sentiment is from the Many Minis Holiday new stamp set. This set coordinates perfectly with our Mini Tags, but you can see it isn't just for that! This card was just too much fun to make!

My second card for today uses all dies! I don't know if you're a "die-aholic" like me, but man, I love 'em. For my background I used the GORGEOUS new Holly Cutting Plate. I layered it over some cream cardstock for a purely Christmas look. Like the Quatrefoil Cutting Plate, the Holly plate cuts a perfect A2 card layer. No trimming needed.

For the word "Peace" I used a new Alphabet Die set released this month. It's called Poster Graphic Alpha Die Set and it's a good size for either cards or scrapbook pages. It would also make pretty monograms. Love all the detail in each letter. I'm going to use this one a lot.

I layered my letters onto a strip of vellum for just a touch of interest…and then I couldn't help but add some clear blings! The papers I used are from the Handmade Holidays Project Pantry Kit (which I used yesterday too!)

Please hop around and see what the rest of the crew has for you today!

Carolyn King – Guest Designer

Charmaine Ikach

Jen Shults

Jodi Collins

Karen Giron

Melody Rupple

Regina Mangum

Sankari Wegman

Shannon White

Shelly Mercado

Stephanie Kraft

Taylor VanBruggen

Wanda Guess

Hi Everyone! It's sneak peeks week at Taylored Expressions! Let the fun begin!  We have inspiration to share Tuesday through Friday.  All of the new products will be available for purchase on Thursday, October 4th at 8 am PST. You'll find it all in the Fresh out of the Oven Department at the Taylored Expressions Store.You also can join us as a fan on Facebook for an early peek at the stamp sets, as well as a SPECIAL Facebook GIVEAWAY, on Wednesday night beginning at approximately 6 pm PST. 

October's release is all about Christmas and Winter! So many great items this month. Whew. I didn't even know where to start – it's all so pretty. I have two cards to share today. Both are very traditional Christmas with red and green. Later in the week I'll pop some other colors in the mix!

The first card is made with the GORGEOUS new Quatrefoil Cutting Plate. Cutting Plates are new this month at TE and I am totally psyched with this development. This Quatrefoil plate cut like 'buttah' in my Big Shot and it's so pretty! The plate is designed to cut a perfect A2 card layer…the finished size is 4" x 5.25". WOW.

I kept the color scheme strictly to red and white. It's so crisp and just says holiday to me. I added some pearl accents but kept the rest classy and clean. This would be a great card to mass produce for your holiday cards – because it can mail flat. I could also see this with a bright green behind the quatrefoil too.

In addition to the beautiful new cutting plates, Taylor released a new layering die set called Label Stacklets 1. I used that too! The dies coordinate perfectly with the new stamp set I used in this first card.

The stamp set is called Rejoice – and is from the Lasting Impressions Collection. It is a full size set of 13 Christmas and Holiday sentiments in a beautiful font combination that is so elegant. Jami concepted this set to match with the Stacklets and it's just a general all-around perfect Christmas sentiments set. I stamped my words in a bright red to match the paper.

My second project for today uses the brand new Poinsettia Bouquet stamp set from the Whimsical Wishes collection by Nancy McKinney. This is the next installment in our Petite Bouquet series….just in time for the holidays. This set has one main image and several sentiments to match.

I used a new word die called Merry! Wait until you see how this die matches with the Very Merry stamp set! When you order the stamps, the die comes with it. LOVE. I cut the word out of pretty dark burgundy paper from one of our new Project Pantry Kits. This kit is called Handmade Holidays from Simple Stories – and it's very homey and warm. Love the plaid paper!

I colored my image using watercolor pencils and my aqua brush. Then I distressed the edges with some Antique Linen ink.

Here is the link list for the rest of the Baker's Dozen (and friends!) for today: 

Carolyn King – Guest Designer

Charmaine Ikach

Jami Sibley – DT Coordinator

Jen Shults

Jodi Collins

Karen Giron

Melody Rupple

Nancy McKinney – Illustrator

Regina Mangum

Sankari Wegman

Shannon White

Shelly Mercado

Stephanie Kraft

Taylor VanBruggen

Wanda Guess

Hi everybody! It's late Thursday night…but I'm just gonna call it Friday! So…happy Friday! Another week has come and gone and it was our first week of Fall. It's been hot here still but the nights are cooling off and I'm in the mood for Fall things….like a pumpkin latte! This past weekend at the stamp convention, one of my purchases was the adorable new Latte Anya stamp from The Greeting Farm! I have been wanting her for a few weeks and was so happy to snap it up at the show. It's been on my mind all week. So….tonight I came home from work and got her inked up.

I thought she needed to be a Fall girl…so I have named her Pumpkin Latte Anya and I chose some of my favorite Autumn colors for the papers.

This is one of my favorite sentiment stamps for Fall. I like the happy font! I cut out some leaves from a Tim Holtz die to put on the card…

I haven't colored an Anya for a while and it's sooooo much fun to color these girls! The next one I want is this cute little witch on her broom. I need to find that one now!

I wanted her hat to be herringbone so I used this orange chevron paper and paper pieced it! I paper pieced the accents on her hat too. 🙂

Here are my supplies…

And my Copic color palette…

Of course she had to have pretty chestnut hair!

Thank you so much for coming by my blog today! I hope you had a nice week. My company gives us one day a year off work to do community service so tomorrow all day I'm working at the Red Cross office. Should be a very nice and positive day – and a great way to start the weekend. Take care everyone!



It's time for the Baker's Dozen Studio Challenge for September!!  This is our monthly opportunity for us to share what makes our stamping studios hum.  Each month we will have a fun, crafty question so we can share our favorites, some tips and tricks, stamping advice and more. 

The question that Taylor gave us for September is:

Within Arm's Reach – What do you keep within arm's reach at your stamp table?  Show us what you have access to without leaving your seat.  What organization methods do you use?  Tell us which ones you love and which ones you'd like to change. So, the Baker's Dozen girls are going to share our stamping spaces today! I can't wait to see everyone's spot.

Here is my desk! This is where I sit for hours and hours stamping and dreaming my creative dreams! It's not super fancy, but it works! I am a neat-nik by nature and I always have to keep my main table clean. It seems like I can't think if it's crazy and cluttered. The rest of my room can look like a tornado went through (and it often does) but my main table gets cleared off at the end of every stamping session…

Here is a LINK to a blog post I did a while ago with pictures of my entire stamp room….check it out if you're interested!

You can see that I have my TV/DVD player right there, and my little drawers full of necessities, and then my paper trimmer and baby wipes close by.

I just got this pretty pink craft mat from Joann's a couple of months ago! It makes me happy…cuz it's pink!

My TV stand is actually paper drawers! LOL! I keep lots of kraft, cream and white cardstock handy so I can just grab what I need. The two binders have card layouts and there's my trusty Ott lite too…

My ink stash is in it's own five drawer rolling cart. I keep the ones I use the most on top where I can just reach over and grab 'em…

Here are my go-to drawers…. One is entirely full of scissors, and one has glue, adhesives and pens. Another one is all embossing powders. You know, the things we use all the time!

Here's a glimpse of my bulletin board…

Here is my cutting station… I keep my Nestabilities and TE Dies in DVD cases in that rack on the wall. I have my Big Shot and My Cricut right next to my ginormous paper cutter. I keep my scoring board here too…

COPICS!!!!!!!

Doesn't this make you happy? It does me!

This is my computer work station. I have my laptop and my printer set up so I can do all my blog posts and print out what I need.

If you have an iPhone and you've upgraded to iOS6….you can now make panorama shots from your phone!!!!! AHHHHH! How cool is that? This is my first try at it. You can see my whole room practically! The baskets on the table on the right have all my design team goodies in them so I can keep my projects straight. There are some very nice Taylored Expressions goodies in there for October! (Top Secret!)

This is my FAVORITE thing that is almost always on my stamping desk….A big furry orange cat waiting to be loved!

Here are all the links for the rest of the crew! I'm so excited to see all the posts for today! I hope you will hop around and have some fun with us. Even our guest designer Carolyn is joining in the fun! Have a great day everybody!

• Charmaine Ikach
• Jen Shults
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Melody Rupple
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Shannon White
• Shelly Mercado
• Stephanie Kraft
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Wanda Guess
• Carolyn King (Guest Designer)

Hi there! Today I've gone batty! More Halloween fun here on my blog this week. I have so many ideas and I'm going to run out of time! LOL. Today's card is a slightly different variation of one of the cards I did in my classes at Paper Garden last month. I had left over supplies so I made the extra cards – now I have instant Halloween cards for people. This one was a favorite. Looks complex, but couldn't be easier – you'll see.

This card is very traditional…just orange and black. Such nice contrast! Usually when I cut out the super fab Tessatina Die I cut it in white. Well, here in black it takes on a very gothic and vintage look, especially against the orange. I rather like it in black too! The bats are from a giant EK Success punch, so making those is easy-peasy. The sentiment is brand new this season from Memory Box. Love it!

In case you haven't figured out…I'm crazy for those bumpy blings!

Once you get everything cut out, this card comes together pretty easily. I popped the bats up on foam tape. This is a great card layout too. Instead of bats, you can use butterflies, flowers, birds, or anything else!

It's getting closer to the weekend! Yippppeeeeee! My awesome friends from LA are coming up and puttin' on a big stamp show here in my town this weekend and I'll be working the show. If you're local, come on out…Saturday all day at the Scottish Rite Center by Sac State! Yahooooooo! Have a marvelous day bloggy peeps!

Hi bloggy friends! It's never too early to start the holiday crafting season, right? I have slowly started making Halloween cards so that it doesn't sneak up on me next month! You know how that goes!! As soon as September comes, it seems like ten days until it's Christmas! Have you started Fall crafting? I saw the Martha Stewart Halloween goodies at Michael's last week – that makes me happy! Our weather hasn't changed yet, though. Today is one of my days to post for Taylored Expressions and I wanted to ink up this cute Trick or Treat A La Carte stamp and use some fun accessories too!

I cut out the image with my oval Nestabilities and popped it up on some foam tape. I edged the white part with a funky lime green ink. Isn't that bat silly? Love that!

Here are my supplies for this project. I LOVE the Spooky Impression plate with the Spiderweb Border Die for Halloween. One side of the impression plate is spiderwebs and the other side is this cool harlequin pattern. It's fun and kind of retro at the same time.

Here's a close up of the harlequin pattern from the impression plate. I very lightly went over it with a sponge and some black ink, just to make the diamonds stand out a bit.

Here's an image of the impression plate:

Have a GREAT day and THANK YOU for coming by my blog today! 🙂

Hi everyone! Happy Saturday! I'm in the studio today watching college football and gettin' my Fall craft on! I love everything leaves, pumpkins, owls….and the pretty colors of Autumn. I wanted to make a card for the current Hero Arts Contest, so that's just what I did! In the background, my team is playing the #12 Buckeyes on ABC national TV and they are NOT getting killed! LOL. We are making a good showing. I don't really have hope that we'll win…but it's nice that we're not getting creamed! Buddy is in here with me enjoying the day with mom.

My card features the pretty Maple Leaf Die from Memory Box, some yummy Distress Inks, Watercolor paper and Hero Arts stamps. Take a gander…

Here's a close up of the leaves…I'll show the steps later on in my post…

I curled the edges up after adhering them to the paper with foam tape…

I love how this word stamp has all kinds of different "gratitude" words on it. I used different parts of the stamp for each leaf, then used the entire stamp for my background.  

Both the leaves and the background layer are watercolor paper. It's thicker and holds up well to lots of inking. Here are my plain die cut leaves…

I added at least three colors to each leaf. Aren't these soooooo delicious!?

Then I stamped the words onto the leaves in dark brown ink…

Here'a picture of 'what's on my desk' today! LOL.

Best wishes to everyone for a WONDERFUL weekend! The DH and I are headed out for dinner together later and a trip to the mall. XOXO

Today it's time again for our cool new calendar projects from Taylored Expressions and I am having such a good time making my pages each month! The Baker's Dozen Design Team will be sharing calendar goodies and ideas with you throughout the rest of the year, so be sure to check out everyone else's projects too.

Refer over to Taylor's blog to get all the info to play along with us each month. There will be a linky at the bottom of Taylor's post and it will remain open all year, so you have the option to go back and catch up if you start playing late. For everyone who plays in 10 or more of these monthly calendar challenges in 2012, there will be a random draw for a TE prize pack valued at over $150!!! Click here to go to the TE Calendar Department and see all the goodies.

I chose to make the "Frame Your Imagination" calendar and use Cuppie as my theme! The stand for the calendar comes in raw wood and then you can paint it whatever color you choose. I painted mine kind of an antique white and then speckled some brown onto it to give it some character.

CLICK here for the calendar stand…CLICK here for the page protectors and CLICK here for the page inserts. I like this a lot because the finished pages are 6×6 and that gives a lot of room to stamp!

Here is my September Calendar page….Cuppie is going back to school!

This little guy is smiling away…

My supplies for this project: Fruity Friends, Year of Sweets 3, Moka Gwen, and the great new Chevron Border Dies!

Here is my Copic palette….

Awwwww….Cuppie even has an apple for his teacher!

AMAZING, AWESOME, FUN, FABULOUS

NEW CONTEST FROM TAYLORED EXPRESSIONS!!!

Taylored Expressions is proud to announce the premiere of a new and exciting stamping talent competition, Last Card Standing. Based in part on very popular reality competitions such as Last Comic Standing, Project Runway, and Chopped, TE is looking for the very best and creative card-makers to stamp their way to the top. Each week, finalists will be challenged to create a themed card for a panel of celebrity judges in hope of avoiding elimination. Finally, the Top 5 Finalists will be voted on by the public, with the stamper receiving the most votes to win the title of Last Card Standing!

What’s at stake? An amazing prize package that includes a 3 month subscription to the Key Ingredients kit club plus 2 full size stamp sets of the winner's choice and a coveted Guest Designer spot for the November/December Release!

The competition begins today with the Open Casting Round. To enter, simply upload your best cards to your Splitcoaststampers Gallery using keyword: TELASTCARD. For this round, ANYTHING GOES — Birthday, Thank You, Holidays, Get Well, Congratulations…the sky’s the limit! The only requirement is that you use at least 1 stamped image from Taylored Expressions. Do you have a card that you think could get you a callback to the next round? Go for it — submissions do NOT have to be a new creation for the Open Casting Round and you may enter as many cards as you want! Both new and old projects will be considered.

Deadline for submission to Open Casting Round: Thursday, September 20, 2012 by 11:59 pm PST.

For contest details, visit the Taylored Expressions Member Company Forum at Splitcoaststampers. GOOD LUCK! I would be so thrilled is one of my cool blog followers won!  Cuz you know you guys are the coolest, right? Yup.

Here is our list of calendar players for today! Take a look!

• Charmaine Ikach
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Melody Rupple
• Sankari Wegman
• Shannon White
• Stephanie Kraft
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Wanda Guess