Michaels - Maybe not . . .

Had seen videos on YouTube showing new Halloween paper craft items at Michaels stores. New stickers, ephemera, paper pads, washi tapes, etc.  Have lots of Halloween products in the craft stash but I wanted to see some of these items in person. Went to a local store and they did not have any of the washi tapes but they did have a few paper pads. I picked up a Halloween paper pad but that was all..... came home and looked at Michaels.com online store to look at the washi tapes they carry for Halloween. They were selling these washi sets for $15.50 but they had it on sale for $12.40.  Their description also tells you who this product is shipped from. The washi tapes I looked at are from Planner Envy. Wanting to know if Planner Envy offered any other designs off I went to their website before I ordered from Mikes....

Planner Envy had the same washi tape set as Mikes, and others, and their price was $8.75 for the same set of Halloween washi tape I wanted and I looked at their Fall washi tape sets and those were also $8.75. I picked out a Halloween set and a Fall set and ordered those:

They are packaged in a clear box and lay flat so they ship well. Here is a side view of the patterns:

Happy to have found Planner Envy. They have lots of washi tape sets - 2 pages worth - on their site and they have new Christmas and Winter sets as well as Halloween, Fall, Easter, Valentine's Day, etc.. Good quality product too.... and they are also having a sale at   plannerenvy.com.  Lots of stickers as well if you need those for your planners/junk journals or other projects you are working on. 

Scrapbook.com also featured new products and I picked up a pack of a set of 2 plates for my new Sizzix  machine. These plates are sparkly red and happy to have them:

It was time for new plates in this craft room and happy to find them in red - 

A little jazzing up for my die cutting machine.... Hoping they last as long as my older plates that are years old.....

Merry & Bright Christmas Card

Stash stuffs used for this card for Christmas:

Hard to get a great photo when using mirrored card stocks but this is the card I made for Christmas using stash stuff. To begin with I used the Simon Says Stamp "Twinkly Lights" die set:

I die cut the strands out using a dark green card stock in the stash. Then I used the two bulb dies in the set and cut out mirrored card stocks in different colours for the bulbs:

Used liquid glue to add the bulbs to the strands:

Set those aside. For the card base I used the same dark green card stock that I used for the green strands and I cut and scored that at the top, landscape style. For the white card front I cut a piece of white card stock 4 1/4 x 5 1/2.   I used an older Taylored Expressions embossing folder:

and embossed this. With that embossed I looked through the rectangle dies in the stash and decided to use the Essential Rectangles die set from Essentials by Ellen (Ellen Hutson):

I used the same mirrored gold card stock for the frame that I used for the gold bulbs and cut out the largest die frame in this die set. Used liquid glue to put the frame on the embossed piece and set that aside to dry. Once that was dried I used scissors to cut around the frame for the card front. Put this embossed rectangle on the card base using liquid glue. Added a couple of the strands of lights over the embossed piece for the card front and let this dry. Once dried I used scissors to trim off any strand pieces hanging over the edges of the card front.

For the "merry & bright" I used the die set from Simon Says Stamp - "Merry & Bright" and this die set also has small star dies as well as a couple of snowflake dies:

I used the mirrored gold card stock and cut the words out. Also cut them out again using white card stock and layered these words together using liquid glue. For the shadow piece behind the "merry.." I wanted to be able to see the bulbs under it so I used a light weight piece of vellum and cut that out. Put the word dies onto the vellum shadow piece using liquid glue. Added glue behind the letters on the shadow vellum piece and put this onto the card front

Here is a different angle to show the shine on this card:

This next photo shows the embossing on the white card front under the words and strands of lights:

Happy to be able to use more of the stash products to make a fun card. With using the mirrored card stocks for the bulbs and the greeting coloured gems were not needed for the card front. A fun holiday card finished and ready for the holiday ahead...