Maggie Holmes is our Guest Designer for June! Click here to check out her amazing and colorful gallery! She did a couple of layouts + an adorable mini book! We are in love with her items!!

She also picked our Granny’s Doily Journaling Tags for the Special of the Month! That means you can get 10% off them for the whole month of June!!

Thank you, Maggie! Your work is amazing!!
xo, Elle

… Is beautiful! When our guest designer for May, Michelle, sent over her projects, one of the first things that caught my eye was her use of glitter on our tags! I love how it made them “pop” off the page and how it adds that extra special touch!

She uses glitter from Papertrey Ink that you can find here. Thanks, Michelle for sharing your glittering tip!

I had some time to play around with the idea the other day and fell even more in love! Pictures can’t really capture how beautiful it is in real life, but trust me, you won’t be disappointed!I had some Stickles on hand and used that. It worked great – I love how the glue and glitter are in one shot! Too much fun!

I hope you all have a great weekend!!
xo, Elle

The rain has stopped falling for a couple of days and the sun is shining, the flowers are opening – everything looks so beautiful! I had to take a picture of my absolute favorite flowers. These peonies where transplanted from my great grandfathers yard. Every year we wait for them to bloom and wish the blooms would last all year round, or even just for a month or two. The color is amazing!

There’s been lots of things happening in the studio! Packages of some display items (that we ordered for the Farm Chick Show) have been arriving and it’s so fun to unpack and see it all. I can’t wait to set the booth up in June – I’ll be taking lots of pictures, I promise! Until then, here’s a little sneak peek:

This last month has made me feel so inspired! It seems like every design leads to a new idea or every color sparks something. Plus, we’ve been extra “vintage-y” around here in prepping for the upcoming craft show, so I think that has been having a lot of influence on us.

Here are a couple of new things that we are lovin’ this week: This shirt, this blog and this blog, this flickr stream, this store, these tips, this necklace and this kit:

Pure bliss!

I’m headed back into the studio – this weekend is going to a super crafty one! What are your Memorial Day plans?

xo, Elle

Today I’d love to talk about creating your own 365 journaling blocks. Earlier this year, Becky Higgins along with Creating Keepsakes developed a kit which allows you to scrapbook in a new way. The idea is to take a photo every day of the year, add it to divided page protectors and then write short journaling bits on little cards that were provided with the kit. The kit has long since sold out but the idea is pretty neat and one that I hope to continue next year, only making it more personal with my own supplies.

Elle’s Studio has a new stamp called My 365 Stamps. It has the basic journaling block shape along with days of the week and other stamps to add into the block. It’s perfect for creating your own 365 journaling cards. Let me show you some ideas:

First you can simply stamp the block onto cardstock, stamping in the words as needed. Here I used white ink and I also rounded the corners.With just a few embellishments, like an Elle’s Studio circle tag cut in half, you can add a tiny bit of detail that really fancies up the journaling block.Here I filled up the journaling area with square tags and printed journaling papers. I fancied up the center journaling block with a little ribbon and a staple. The one on the right simply uses a lined journaling piece and not the My 365 Stamps at all.If you wanted to keep your journaling block in a 4″ x 6″ format, simply cut a 4″ x 6″ piece of cardstock, add the My 365 Stamps journaling block to one side, then embellish the other half with printed papers, ribbons, buttons, etc. You could also add in a small photo, or put two journaling blocks side by side. These would fit into the divided 4″ x 6″ page protectors.Here’s all my samples together to show the various ideas:And here’s an idea of how the journaling blocks look all lined up in Becky’s 365 Album.Here’s a sampling of the smaller journaling blocks all lined up along the bottom, with a 4″ x 6″ journaling block at the top.And another fun addition for the 365 albums, would be the date/note stamps. I simply stamped them onto cardstock, cut them out and rounded two corners. Tied buttons were added for embellishments. These little tabs could easily be added to photos or the journaling blocks.And as a bonus, you can purchase the My 365 Stamps at a discount all through the month of May. I hope you consider the 365 way of scrapbooking. I have really enjoyed this method of scrapbooking because it’s simple yet you capture an entire year’s worth of photos in a fun way.
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Thanks, Michelle for showing us some fabulous ways to use these stamps! We love how you incorporated everything!

If you need some page protectors, and don’t have Becky’s kit, you could also use these here. They are perfect for a 12 x 12 album and work great for filling the top 4 slots and then using the bottom 2 for the 365 journaling!

Just wanted to write a quick note to let you all know we are currently hosting two giveaways! There is one at the Studio Calico blog and the other is at Triple the Sketch!Make sure you stop by both places and leave a comment at their blogs to be entered!
xo, Elle

You never know when you are going to need a gift tag. I’ve found combining our die cut circle tags with stickers, rub-ons and/or chipboard letters work great! I love the new 2 inch size we have, this size is just perfect for lots of uses!

I especially love the new American Craft run-ons and stickers! They are so colorful, go on smoothly and are the perfect size for this project!I also tried out letters and I can’t wait to add these to a package! So much fun!!And, last but not least 🙂 A last minute gift for a teacher! Too cute!!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I wish all those mom’s out there a big and Happy Mother’s Day! I can’t wait to give my mom her present tomorrow 🙂

xo, Elle

P.S. A fun tutorial from our guest designer, Michelle, is coming early next week!

Michelle Wooderson is our Guest Designer for May, and we are so excited to share her creations with you! Check out her full gallery here. It’s full of lots of fun ideas, like handmade note flats to give away for a gift!

She has also picked the My 365 Stamp as the special for the month of May. That means, for the entire month of May you can get 10% off!

Thanks, Michelle for creating such inspiring pieces!
xo, Elle

For the last couple of months we have been getting ready for The Farm Chicks Show in Spokane, Wa and we are so, SO excited to be exhibiting! We have been putting together a ton of fun display items that show some great ways to use our tags and working on some tutorial handouts, too!

This show had a lot of influence on our most recent launch. The recipe cards are something we have wanted to introduce for forever and with the show coming up we thought it was perfect timing!

We have been getting some questions about the show, so we thought we’d answer them here! We will be bringing everything from our web shop to the show! All the journaling tags, stamps, note flats, recipe cards, etc. If you are traveling, we will be offering to ship your purchase, for a flat rate, directly to your house on the date you specify so you won’t have to pack it in your suitcase! My cousin will be helping me at the show and I will be there, too! Please make sure you introduce yourself, there will be a little extra something for our blog readers, plus I would be super thrilled to meet our blog readers and online customers!

It’s going to be a crafty weekend 🙂
xo, Elle

p.s. For those who can’t make it to the show, no worries! All the tutorial handouts will be available for free download here in June + we’ll have something special on the blog for you while we are gone!

p.p.s. the flower pots pictured above use our new Granny’s Doily Journaling Tags – it was my mom’s idea and she made them!!

All the new items have been posted in our store! We are so excited for this launch because there is a lot going on with it!

We have two new lines: Whale of a Time and Pocket Full of Posies
The Pocket Full of Posies line even has larger note sheets to use around the house or for a lot of journaling.

Lots of fun, new journaling tags! These below are called Granny’s Doilies because the remind me of the colorful doilies I’d see around the house when I was a kid. These are called The Country Fair – I love the colors and the country look they have!
We got a little crazy and added seven more sets of the vintage flashcards! There are some for spring, summer, babies, gardening, etc.!

We designed a bunch of recipe cards – these are something I’ve wanted to carry for awhile now and I’m so excited we finally got to design some!!

Lots of new cut outs, including some for dog and cat lovers!

We received a ton of requests in February and March to create something that could be used for the 365 projects everyone is doing and we came up with these tags! They come in two different sizes. You can highlight, circle or mark the day of the week and month of the year. Then write or stamp the date in the circle and journal about your day!

All our circle tags have gotten bigger! They now are 2 inch wide circles, instead of the 1.75. We are in love with this new size! Because of the size change we went back and made some changes to our old designs. Some have new colors and some have been redesigned!

A couple things not pictured above: The baby items now come in green and purple and all the baby circles have been redesigned to include more phrases! We have also added 8 more clear stamps and a couple more note flat designs!

There’s lots to see and we hope you all enjoy the new designs – thank you so, so much for your super sweet compliments in the last post! We read every single one and they mean the world to us!!

The four randomly drawn winners from the last post are:
Rachel Carlson on April 18, 2009 2:04 PM
jennie on April 19, 2009 11:08 AM
Deb O. on April 19, 2009 4:13 PM
Shayne Sheard via email entry

Congrats! You each get to pick 4 items from the shop 🙂 Email me your choices and address and I’ll get your prizes out asap!

Huge thank you to everyone who stopped by! Love you all!
xo, Elle

ps. If you are looking for the items in our etsy shop, they will be there soon! We’ll be adding the new items to our etsy shop over the next couple of days.