Bake Someone Happy

 Meet the latest addition to our Eyelet Outlet team of allstar brads: Gingerbread Men and Women! These fun characters made their debut in the EO Store last week and are ready to join in holiday projects of all descriptions, especially cards, like this one:

I (Lauren) stamped a sweet little house for my Gingerbread Brads to live in and built a background with an assortment of red and green washi tapes, including: Ho Ho Ho, Skinny Tape, Heart Tape, Christmas Pattern and Wide Tree Tape. I scattered a few Peppermint Candies and a Candy Cane Brad, affixed a red Heart Enamel to the front door and called it a day! 

Hop on over to the EO Store to find brads, bling, tape, enamels, paper flowers, and sequins for every occasion!

 

Lauren Bergold

has always wanted to build 

a gingerbread house!

It's the Big Day!

Wishing a very Merry Christmas 

to everyone who is celebrating today, 

from all of us at Eyelet Outlet!

♥♥♥

cards by Lauren Bergold featuring Eyelet Outlet Solid Paper Flowers,
Holiday Flower Bling, Holiday Bling, Christmas Washi, Heart Tape,
Checked Tape, Red Dot Tape, Skinny Tape, Christmas Pattern and Red Tree Tape

Naughty of Nice??

What sort of crafter were you this year?

Naughty? 

or Nice?

Either way, Eyelet Outlet has some great new washi tape and plenty of sweet decorative brads

to help you create a big of Christmas Magic this season.

Our bling is the bling-iest!!

Supplies:

Candy Cane Brads

Sleigh Brad

Santa Suit Brads

Washi Tape

Bling Strips

Bling

Sticky Back Bling

Hey..and one more show is coming to Birch Run, MI

this weekend...

November 8-9, 2019

Swing by and say hello to me and pick up your favorite holiday embellies!!

AND....

CKC in Tacoma, WA

Peace, Love, Joy... and Caffeine!

Ok yes, I (Lauren) suppose that the first Wednesday of October is an odd time to post holiday cards, but for one thing: the 60 days between now and December first will go much faster than any other two month period of the year; and, for another thing: we've got some really cool new Holiday Coffee Cup Brads in the Eyelet Outlet Store and I couldn't wait to use them!

These are some of the fastest and easiest cards I've made all year, and if I mass-produced holiday cards, this might well be the design I'd choose! I stamped the sentiment on patterned paper with a GRAPH design, so I didn't even have to measure, lol! I colored the letters with red and green brush markers, affixed all three styles of Holiday Coffee Cup, plus a couple of Holly Brads, then matted the whole thing on a piece of argyle patterned paper I made myself, by neatly lining up strips of Christmas Pattern Washi Tape on some plain white cardstock. I loved the landscape version so much I decided to try portrait mode, as well. I grabbed two more coffee cups, a holly brad and this time made the mat from Poinsettia Tape. Easy, peasy! 

Is it just me, or would this be an excellent time for a delicious hot drink? Pass the Holiday Coffee Cups, please! :)

Lauren Bergold

enjoys cardmaking, caffeinated beverages, 

and making cards which feature caffeinated beverages!

Death Before Decaf!

It's that wonderful time of year once again: by which I (Lauren) mean both the holiday season AND the winter Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop! Thus I decided to make some giftcard holders that combine my love of coffee, holiday cardmaking and Eyelet Outlet Coffee Brads and Coffee Stamps!

I made a very simple folder; it's just a piece of 3.5 x 8.5" kraft cardstock scored at the 2.5 and 6.5" point, to create a little pocket inside which can hold a giftcard OR a check, money, a little note, even some small photos. You could make these out of double sided patterned paper to save having to trim little panels to decorate the outside, but I always seem to have loads of little patterned paper off-cuts and this is a great way to use them up! 

Once I'd covered the pocket, top flap and back panel with cardstock, it was time for the fun part: decorating! I covered a small scrap of white cardstock with Eyelet Outlet Merry Christmas Tape and diecut it into a heart which is slightly narrower than the top flap, but hangs down a bit over the pocket area. This hides the place where I secured seambinding to the front, but still leaves room for the bow that literally ties the whole thing together. I used my Stephanie Barnard dies to create the coffee cup out of lighter kraft and the lid and front panel from this fun argyle-inspired Christmas Pattern Washi. I added a green Paper Flower, anchored with a Wreath Brad, decorated with some tiny red Pearl Bling berries.

In the second version, I decided to get a bit more coffee-centric, so I stamped the coffee bean from our Coffee Stamp Set in an all-over pattern and used a brown Tombow with a water brush to add color. This time my diecut heart has vertical-oriented Red Tree Washi and the cup is adorned with Santa Tape flanked by Skinny Stripes. And to hold on the flowers, one those awesome beans from the Coffee Brad Set which also contains both red and white coffee cups!

Be sure to hop over and see all the amazing cards at the Coffee Lovers' Blog Hop, and leave a little love for Amy Tsuruta and the other Coffee Elves who are working so hard behind the scenes at these events! ♥♥♥

Lauren Bergold 

would not *literally* prefer death to decaf... 

especially late in the day!

Holly, Poinsettia and Pinecones

There is no possible combination of holiday foliage that I (Lauren) do not love; especially if we're talking about Eyelet Outlet Holly, Poinsettia and Pinecone Brads! See?

Here's a shocking true confession for you: I own probably 15 sets of foliage dies and at least 7 or 8 of them are holiday foliage! But I use *all* of them --separately or together-- pretty much every year. In this case I've pulled out some medium sized pine branches and some smaller holly clusters, but really this idea would work with any foliage you like... you could even stamp rather than diecut, for that matter. I've used the same basic sketch for all three cards, just changed up the specific shapes and products. This is a great way to make a bunch of cards quickly, without having to mass-produce in the traditional way. For my first card I added the foliage to a matted star diecut, anchored the fronds with a trio of Poinsettia Brads and grounded the whole thing with some argyle-inspired Christmas Pattern Washi.

My second card is landscape rather than portrait, and I've used a nice big label shape, so that I could scatter a bunch of the gorgeous new Pinecone Brads around a Bling-bedecked Paper Flower stack. A double strip of Pine Tree Washi frames the whole thing quite nicely.

My third card features an ancient 3-layer heart die and a cluster of Holly Brads with red Jewel centers against a background of sheet music adorned with Holly Tape. This illustrates one of my *favorite* things about washi tapes that have a lot of "white" in them... they are almost always translucent, so that you can apply them over different colors of cardstock or patterned paper and get different effects!

Of course, there is a nearly unlimited amount of beautiful combinations you could make with just a few EO Holiday Brads and tapes, so let your imagination go wild! ♥

Lauren Bergold

realizes that her holiday cardmaking duties would 

be easier if she made 50 of one design... :)

The Saint Nick Express!

The most daunting thing about Christmas cards, at least for me (Lauren), is that I need A LOT of them (60+) and obviously I need them all at the same time. For those of us who don't enjoy mass-producing cards, this can really add up to a lot of time spent. Fortunately, I've learned a few tricks. One is that I make holiday cards all year long. Another is to use pre-made products whenever possible. I love the pocket scrapbooking cards that come with so many paper collections. There are a million varieties, and give cards an automatic focal point. Oh, and did I mention that they are the perfect size to feature some of our brand new Eyelet Outlet holiday brads? When I adorn journal cards with brads and place them on top of a custom background of EO washi tape, I can make a lot of unique and individual cards, very quickly! Who doesn't like that?!

When I saw this "Ho Ho Ho" pocket card, I immediately thought of our new Santa Suit Brads which come with both coat and boots. They are exactly right with last year's Santa Hats, as well. I matted the card on some gingham paper and then popped it up on a background I made by filling a slightly smaller than A2-sized panel with Red Tree Tape.

Stickers are another great time saver. I like to look at the features and scale of the design, and think about where I could slip in a brad or two to add texture and interest. This fun holiday car just happened to have a wreath on its front grill, exactly the size of our brand new Wreath Brads! The wreath on the sticker featured a red bow which overhung slightly and looked a bit odd, so I added a Poinsettia Brad at the top to cover. Mounting them so closely, I had to turn the second brad's prongs both facing the same direction. They were pretty secure, but just to be extra safe, I added a small piece of double stick tape at the back, over the prongs. Trust me, they are not going to slip or slide anywhere! The car's headlights were just a smidge smaller than our 6mm Pearl Brads, the size and profile of which really do resemble a vintage car don't you think? Finally, there I added a Heart Brad over the one printed on the card. My background is this fun argyle Christmas Pattern tape, and I've added a few red and grey Skinny Tapes behind the car, as well.

At 4" square, the pocket card with this fun snowglobe on was just a little bit too big for a standard A2 card. I often "size up" to a five or six inch square card, but this time I wasn't crazy about the original background. So I decided to neatly trim the words and fussycut the snowglobe, whose little house was just the right size for our Santa and Mrs. Claus to stand in front of, with a couple of Snowflake Brads for authenticity. When making tape backgrounds, wide washi covers lots of area fast, and this Tree Tape is an old favorite of mine. A strip of Red Dots Tape grounds the sentiment and fills in the panel perfectly.

I bet you have LOTS of pocket cards and stickers already in your collection that you could "fancy up" with a few Eyelet Outlet brads, bling or enamel shapes to make super-fast, super-fun cards!

Lauren Bergold 

makes holiday cards all year long 

with Stephanie Severin at Jingle Belles!