"The Sweet Life" collection ...out in the world

Me and Aaron are artists who like to share. We know how much happiness the creative process brings us personally and through teaching we see how easily this happiness can be spread around. But teaching is just a drop in the bucket...you can only reach so many people. So when the opportunity to design a scrapbooking collection came our way we jumped at the chance. A scrapbooking collection is a very useful cog in the wheel of spreading creativity around. It's so cool to see our designs going to good use. And it's an honor. Seriously, It's an absolute honor when we see something that we painted here in our humble home being used as the focal point of someone's very personal creative project. So...now that "The Sweet Life" collection is out there in the world, we wanted to show some fab examples of how it's being put to use, and also tell you about some places where you might find it for yourself! 

We're totally loving these adorable mini albums by Melissa Phillips, using papers and journaling cards from the collection. The diagonal pink striped paper on the ice cream album is the flip side of our "Ballerina Cupcakes" paper. And the cakes you see on the ballerina themed album are from our paper titled "Hooray For Cake".

Again, this is one of our journaling cards being fabulously incorporated into a project. And those are a couple of our Washi Banner stickers affixed beneath the button.

Both of these adorable cards also by Melissa Phillips. This one has some of our "Bits & Pieces" paper in the background. I love the aqua vellum envelope, which is also from Melissa Frances, and the trim, ribbon, and tiny flower finish it off perfectly. 

If you checked out the pics or were lucky enough to be in Anaheim that weekend, you may have seen this adorable little treat container in our booth at CHA. It's made using our papers ("Sprinkle Everyday" and "Mixed Media Doodles"), a journal card, and our Sweet Life Words stickers. It was made by Rachel McAffee.

And she also made these adorable party hats! Seen here: a Journaling Card, and the pink stripe paper is from our "Ballerina Cupcakes" paper. 

The bunting banner on this hat is from our "Mixed Media Doodles" paper. The blue stripes are the flipside of our "Bits & Pieces" paper. And the "what a perfect day" banner is one of our Chipboard Accents. 

Another Chipboard Accent, and our pink stripe paper again. Of all our papers I believe we'll personally use the pink stripes the most. I love the sequins on this one!

And yes...we have Treat Bags! Though Rachel took them to another level with the fab embellishments. 

Here's another Treat Bag, and Rachel adorned it with one of my favorite journaling cards in our collection. It's our mascot bunny but rendered in basic black and white chalkboard style. I love the simplicity of the design. 

We have been receiving lots of emails from you guys asking when we will have our collection in stock in our online shop. The answer is: Any day now! Our order is in, and we are awaiting it's arrival on our doorstep. So as soon as it is in we promise to let you know! We love that you guys are so excited! We will be shipping worldwide!

But...If you truly just can't wait another second...

The awesome Blue Moon Scrapbooking carries most of the collection! And they've got a great little video featuring the items they've got in-stock. What a great source for tons of amazing scrapbooking supplies! We loved meeting Scott from Blue Moon at CHA. 

And for you paper loves in the San Diego, CA area...You can find "The Sweet Life" at the fabulous Paper Tales. Dining with all the Paper Tales gals was the highlight of our time at CHA. The realest, funniest, coolest, gang of gals you'll meet in the world of paper.

One of the funniest of the Paper Tales gals is our sweet and talented friend Karin. She will be teaching this adorable mini book using the collection at Paper Tales soon! 

And we are loving seeing peeks of projects using The Sweet Life over on Instagram. Loving these pics of this mini album that @maidmarianmade is working on! We love how she colored her Allie & Amy and cake! 

We are just so thrilled to see our designs in the hands of so many talented, creative, FUN people! We'd love to see pics of anything you've created using the collection! And we may share them here on the blog! So please feel free to send them to us or comment with a link to your blog post, or tag us on Instagram! @jennyeveryday

Thanks so much for popping in today! We hope that you are inspired by these projects! And we hope that you love "The Sweet Life". Have a great day friends!

Love from the NJ Shore, 

xo Jenny and Aaron

Paper Mache Confetti Keepsake bowls

We are definitely paper lovers and we know we're not alone. We talk about it in our book, how us crafters each have our own stories about hoarding pretty papers. When we were at CHA and went out to dinner with the Paper Tales girls, every single one of us admitted to holding onto our favorite sheets of paper from companies that are now long gone...our "stash" of untainted sheets that we'll probably never ever cut up. And why not? Some papers are a work of art and should be collected. We know first hand what goes into designing a paper collection. 

But alas, paper is meant for cutting, crafting, and making cool and pretty things. It's not just for scrapbooking. And we think that this project is great for those of you who are "paper curious". Those of you who visit the paper aisle in Michaels just to look at the patterns. Maybe you never buy any, simply because you don't know what you'd use it for. Well these bowls are a fairly simple way to get your feet wet with paper.  

 We came across this tutorial on pinterest and thought it would make a fun springtime weekend project. Making the paper mache paste for this project brought back so many childhood crafting memories. I remember making pinatas, bowls, and masks in school. It was so much fun! And so simple! I remember being amazed that those strips of newspaper dipped in homemade glue soon turned into a hard sculpture with a shiny finish. Anyone who uses mod podge in paper crafting is only a smidge away from doing paper mache art.

And this one is definitely kid friendly. Perfect for Spring (imagine filling the bowls with Easter eggs!), or for Birthdays, Christmas...We will be making Christmas bowls for sure...using a mix of patterned paper and vintage cards. You can do the same with Valentine cards, or maybe even a vintage baby shower bowl. For our bowl we wanted to use papers that worked well with our color palette, and we made it a keepsake by incorporating copies of vintage family photos.

 

Here is what you will need:

bowls (clear makes it very easy to plan your design)

whisk 

1/2 cup flour

3 tablespoons sugar

4 cups water total

patterned papers 

paper punch 

plastic wrap

gloss mod podge or varnish

paint brush

First mix a half cup of flour into 2 cups of cold water. While you do this bring two cups of water to a boil.

Once your water is boiling add your flour mixture to it and bring the pot to a boil again.

Remove it from the heat and then whisk in 3 tablespoons of sugar. The paste will thicken as it cools.

Now for your bowls. Again, you can use any bowl, but we used glass so that we could flip it over periodically to see how our design looked from the inside. Just cover your bowls with plastic wrap to keep your paper and paste from sticking to the bowls. Wrap the plastic at least an inch around the inside rim. Having this extra slack will make it easier for removal.

Next, just punch your papers. You can plan your bowls or you can let them happen naturally, like tossing confetti. We liked the idea of going mostly random but with some vintage photos placed throughout the bowl. 

The inside bottom of the bowl will be your focal point, so if you have any special images or photos place them here. We used our fingers mostly, just smeared the paste onto the paper, pressed it to the bowl, and then smeared more paste onto the back of the paper. Using two sided papers makes it easier of course. But they don't have to be two sided. You can just paste the exact same paper to the blank side of the paper that you just glued down.

Once the entire bowl is covered just give it a once over to see how you like it. Since there aren't any rules, if you see a spot that needs more of a certain color, just glue down another circle. 

This is the advantage of using a clear bowl. You can peek inside to make sure your positioning things exactly where you want them.

Be patient and let your bowl dry overnight. The next day, pop your new paper bowl off of the real bowl. It should pop off easily, but if it doesn't you can carefully slide a toothpick between the the paper bowl and the real bowl and gently pry it all the way around. That should do the trick. 

Then brush on a coat of gloss mod podge or varnish. We did two coats, making sure to let dry between coats.

Once they're fully dry they're ready for display. We love how these came out. The larger one has the vintage family photos inside and the smaller is just pretty patterned papers. 

We made our's fairly small, but if you're more ambitious you can make them really big...whatever you want. These are really just a tribute to true confetti bowls. You can also make a bowls from actual confetti and the process isn't much different. Check out a tutorial for that here.

Again, these were easy and fun. Kinda a carefree creative project for any skill level whatsoever. Definitely worth a try with the kiddos.

Ok, hope you have fun with paper mache!

xo, Jenny...and Aaron

Hooray! "The Sweet Life" hits stores this week!

Today was definitely a good mail day for us! And hopefully there's an equal feeling of excitement being felt at shops around the country...and the world. In our mailbox was a package full of items from our scrapbooking collection "The Sweet Life", which is the first offering from our partnership with Melissa Frances...and we couldn't be more excited about it. And if it arrived in our mailbox today, then that means that there is a pretty good chance that lots and lots of stores have received their shipments of the collection as well. Which is SUPER exciting!

 On the one hand it feels like we've been waiting forever for it to arrive...and on the other it feels like just yesterday that we were designing the stuff. A major highlight in the whole process was our trip to CHA. Just being there with the line and having the chance to talk with all the shop owners who will be carrying the collection was such thrill. Everyone was so enthusiastic about the collection...and probably one of the coolest things was how many times we'd meet someone at CHA and it turned out that they have been longtime readers of the blog. Also, so many shop owners came to check out our line after being tipped off by one of our faithful readers...which just totally melts our hearts. A huge thank you to all of you who have been cheering us on from day one! We hope you love the collection as much as we loved designing and painting it!

In today's package there were lots of goodies. Above you'll see chipboard pieces, Washi Stickers, Treat bags, journaling cards, and sweet saying stickers.

And this here is a very very cute mini book kit! It comes with everything that you see here! 

I love this tiny little "Sprinkle every day with Fun" element! Look at our tiny ice cream cone! 

There are so many sweet little bits to adorn your pages! 

It is really such a fun little kit! 

And the journaling cards are so adorable! They would be perfect for project life! 

I love seeing our bunny here rendered chalkboard style.

And treat bags! Aren't they so sweet?! You get this variety of 4 in each pack! 

We are just so excited to have these in our hands. Cannot wait to start creating and crafting! 

And of course our papers! 6 Double sided sheets! We blogged all about our special design process...each pattern is hand painted by us. 

Oh and I just had to share these pics that Carolyn Peeler sent us. Carolyn, who you may know, is the Senior Creative Director at Melissa Frances, and she was just in Norway teaching at a fabulous shop called Bikuben. We blogged about meeting the sweet owners Ellen and Egil at CHA, and later had a fantastic dinner date with them. Well, they carry "The Sweet Life" at Bikuben, and Carolyn took the trip there to teach some classes that featured our line. And from what we hear, they loved working with "The Sweet Life" collection! Carolyn asked the class attendees in the pic above to hold up their favorite papers! So fun right? Seriously, we LOVE putting our work in the hands of other artists and seeing how they go off in their own creative direction. 

And we just love these samples Carolyn colored using Copic markers. Above you can see the two sides of our paper titled "Mixed Media Doodles". One side has layers of vintage baking book pages collaged with some of our abstract painting strokes. And the other is an antique-y looking coloring book style page featuring Allie & Amy! some of our roses, a cake, cupcakes, a bunting banner, scrollwork, and other things that are ready and waiting for you to work your magic on! Perfect for Art Journaling! 

We will be carrying "The Sweet Life" collection in our shop very soon! But you can always let your favorite loal shop know about it as well! Thanks bunches for popping in and for being such awesome cheerleaders! We couldn't have made this collection without you all.

xo Jenny & Aaron