Pebbles Inc. Let Freedom Ring!

Welcome to our Fourth of July celebration! This weekend up to the Fourth of July we are going to fill the blog with red, white, and blue to get you ready for the party! To start, we have Pebbles Inc. with their line, Let Freedom Ring now available in Craft Warehouse Stores!

Can you imagine all the beautiful things you can create with this lovely line? Banners, layouts, cards, and party supplies? It would be the perfect line for any Fourth of July project.

DIY Mirror Clings by Guest Designer Disney Powless from Ruffles & Stuff

Hello, everyone! I am so thrilled to be posting here for Craft Warehouse today. I have to say, when I was asked to pick something from CW to use for a project I thought: "Really? How could I ever choose just one??" Craft Warehouse is like heaven for me. I walk in and my senses are just flooded with delight! In the end I chose to do a project for my daughter and her friend that I thought they would love helping and playing with. I was right! They love these DIY Mirror Clings. I hope you do too! Let's make some.

The main ingredient for this craft is brightly colored puff paints! These worked wonderfully.

You'll also need plastic coated freezer paper (grocery stores) and an image template (optional).

Here are some templates I created for this project. Click these photos to enlarge and print templates, or click here for more templates. You can also freehand any design you'd like!

• Place a square of freezer paper over your template. You can trace it on to the freezer paper with a pen, or just paint along the lines that show through.
• Tap the top of the puff paint on the table a few times to get rid of any possible air bubbles and trace the outline of your design with a thick layer of paint.

• Then fill in your outline, being generous with your amount of paint. Let dry for several hours or overnight.

• Once completely dry, peel off of the freezer paper.

Then stick them onto your mirror or windows and have fun!

Thanks so much to Craft Warehouse for this great opportunity!

Have a great day, everyone!

Love,

Disney

Think you have what it takes to be a Craft Warehouse designer? Check out our 2012-2013 Guest Design Team Call here.

Guest Designer Disney Powless

Welcome Guest Designer Disney Powless from Ruffles and Stuff. Disney is a talented crafter and blogger. She can sew, do home decor, craft, paint, ummmm... ok, really, what can she not do?

How long have you been crafting?

My mom taught me to sew when I was 5 or 6. She is a very creative woman and definitely passed that on to me and my siblings. We used to go to a family friend's house and make quilts to send to hospitals. She was a sassy older woman with a craft room that took up half of the second floor in her house. We'd laugh and sew for hours. That room is where I fell in love with sewing.

What inspires you to be creative? 

To be honest, a lot of the time my inspiration comes from wanting things I cannot afford. Instead of buying expensive things I like, I find ways to make them myself.

What Craft Warehouse products do you love to use?

I love all of the unique stamps and the endless scrapbooking supplies. They also carry some of my favorite fabric designers that I can't find in some other stores, which is wonderful.

Many people don't think of themselves as creative. But creativity is just looking at things differently! It's like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it. Practice looking at things in different ways instead of just taking them at face value. And of course, if you don't know where to start, craft stores(like Craft Warehouse!) have great kits and ideas to get you on the right path.

Make sure you check out our blog tomorrow with Disney's guest designer tutorial!

Think you have what it takes to be a guest designer for Craft Warehouse? Click here to see how to apply for our Designer Spotlight column.

DIY Chain Friendship Bracelets

We had to share this great DIY Chain Friendship Bracelet tutorial by fashion and DIY blogger, Stripes & Sequins.

This would make a great summer project for the kids, camp, or hey... yourself! Get all the supplies you need to make these at your local Craft Warehouse!

Heidi Swapp's Color Magic & Mister Huey's Mists

Ok, it has to be said. Heidi Swapp is a genius. She really is. If you follow her Creative Channel, you would have seen her use her Color Magic Paper with Mister Huey's mists and window cleaner. Yes, you read that right. Window. Cleaner.

I really wanted to try this out. The cleaner wipes the resist on the paper off so that you get a whiter resist. The paper can hold the moisture because it is thicker almost like thick cardstock. It doesn't warp like thinner resist papers.

This was so much fun! In fact, you can see below, how much!

Camera Trends

1. Lawn Fawn Say Cheese Clear Stamps; 2. Studio Calico Camera Veneers

3. Amy Tangerine Album for American Crafts 4. Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Sydney's Snapshot paper for American Crafts

Vintaj Handmade Jewelry

Welcome to Vintaj Big Kick Weekend! This weekend you will be inspired with unique jewelry projects that you can do right at home!

How fun would it be to make your own jewelry using Vintaj Blanks and Embossing Plates. Take a peek at how easy it is in the video below.

Then color your new design with Ranger Ink's Vintaj Patinas. Now available at your local Craft Warehouse.

Vintaj Big Kick Weekend

Welcome to Vintaj Big Kick Weekend! This weekend you will be inspired with unique jewelry projects that you can do right at home!

Jewelry has a brand new friend! The BIGkick works with our smallest dies to our big 6" wide plastic-backed treasures and embossing tools. If that wasn’t big enough, this portable roller machine cuts and embosses many different materials. Now that’s a big deal!

Watch this video to see how to use this special machine made to emboss and etch designs on brass metal blanks.



Stay tuned in this weekend with special projects and inspiration using Vintaj products!

Distress Markers Tutorial

I am thrilled to be doing a Designer Spotlight for Craft Warehouse!!! When Craft Warehouse approached me, they knew that my passion begins and ends with coloring so it was only natural for me to try out the all new Tim Holtz Distress Markers! 

As soon as I got them, I couldn't wait to start playing around and trying out different techniques. I ended up using two over and over that I wanted to share with you today. The first one is stamping with black ink on watercolor paper and using the markers to color in the black and white image. 

This really takes no time at all and I love the free flowing effect from watercoloring. You don't have to worry about getting outside the lines because that just adds character to your finished project.

The 2nd technique is one that I haven't tried before but really ended up loving. In this technique, you actually color the stamp BEFORE you stamp it! This is really cool for flowers, etc. because you can paint the petals one color and the stem/leaves another then stamp it on your paper for a really unique look. You can keep it as is, or take it a step further and draw out the color from the line art that you stamped to create a beautifully hand painted look just by using your markers and stamps! 

I also created a video tutorial for  you so you can see how easy and fast both these techniques are to do yourself! I hope you will enjoy:

Thank you SO much Craft Warehouse for giving me this AMAZING opportunity to do this designer spotlight for you. It was a pleasure and now I have a new medium to create stunning effects with color! 

-Carisa Zglobicki

Craft Warehouse Guest Design Team Call 2012-2013

 

Do you love scrapbooking, card making, stamping, jewelry making, paper crafts, quilting, or fiber arts?  We would love to invite you to submit photos of an original project, telling us something about it. If your project is picked, you and your artwork could be featured on the Craft Warehouse blog for our new Designer Spotlight column!

This will be our opportunity to generously display the talent of one particular artist at a time! The designer will be provided supplies donated by Craft Warehouse to create anything they wish with it. This will not just be for scrapbookers but also fiber artists, quilters, jewelry designers, stampers, and even mixed media artists!

If you would like to become a Craft Warehouse guest designer, submit photos of an original project, telling us something about it. This will give us an idea of what your blog post could look like if you were to be selected to be a guest designer. Feel free to share either a step-by-step, show and tell, or even a video tutorial. We would love to see what you have to offer!

If you would like to be featured on our blog as a guest designer, please send us the following:

1. Name, email address, blog address, and the Craft Warehouse you shop at.

2. At least 3-5 photos of a never been published before project. Only well photographed images without watermarks will be considered.

3. Anything else we should know about the project including steps, if you have them.

Email submissions to jenevans(at)craftwarehouse(dot)com with "Designer Spotlight Submission" as the subject by July 31st, 2012. We look forward to seeing what you create! *Open for US residents only, please.

Guest Designer Carisa Zglobicki

We are excited to launch a new blog series called, Designer Spotlight. This will be our opportunity to generously display the talent of one particular artist at a time! This week we will be featuring color artist, Carisa Zglobicki. Carissa is the owner of the new online (and soon in print) magazine, Designed to Color which is devoted to inspiring readers with techniques using different coloring mediums for stamping. Carissa also designs for Unity as a Unity TV Design Team Member, Helmar, Saturated Canary Digital Stamps, and Freckles and Pigtails. We are excited to share with you what she has created using Craft Warehouse products tomorrow, but first, asked her to share with us a little about herself.

How long have you been crafting?

3 years but I've always loved coloring. I remember filling up coloring book after coloring book as a kid and always asking for a new box of sharpened crayons. I just loved seeing all those beautiful colors & the names were awesome like atomic tangerine and blizzard blue!

What Craft Warehouse products do you love to use (and why)?

I think CW carries a lot of my favorite coloring mediums. I am also in love with Smashing recently. You can use anything to decorate a smash page, my favorite lines right now are Amy Tangerine and Studio Calico.

People email me or tell me that I color so beautifully and that they wish they could do the same. I always respond letting them know, they can!!! Just start with whatever coloring medium they like or prefer. And color something every day or at least 2 -3 times a week (I know as a mother of 3 time is precious) you'll see that as you do something you love more and more often, you'll grow by leaps and bounds in your style and ability.

Stay tuned in tomorrow, as we share Carisa's coloring tutorial!