New ECS Products! Introducing "The Bunting"

This is something I have always been interested in, and there are so many ways you can make them! Mine, of course, will be made with paper since we are a paperie, and I'm so excited to add them to the shop!

I am one of those people who loves things in miniature (keep your comments to yourself), and these little paper buntings are so cute I had to make one for myself. It does a great job at brightening up my crafting space, which is currently recovering after Hurricane Rayna ran through it. I'd love to get some picture of my craft space up, but that will most likely never happen since I run through my crafting space like a crazy person leaving a trail of cut paper, ribbon and messy adhesives in my wake. Feel free to imagine what it might look like, though. What you can see is the wall I look at when I craft. :) My drafting table is in this corner, and I have access to my crafting lamp and my embellishment center (on the right side of the picture). And then there is the lovely bunting I made for myself out of some of my favorite paper.

These buntings can be made out of all kinds and patterns of paper, and I am currently making them on 5'1" long cotton thread with 1' of blank string on either side for hanging. They can also be tied to skewers on either side and put into a cake! I'm thinking about making a cake just so I can do that. These things are very cool. :)

Go check these out at the shop... Love 'em! *ECS Paper Buntings*

Happy Mother's Day! And a Sale to Boot...

Good people of the interwebs, Ehle Custom Stationery is having a sale! It is indeed a momentous occasion. :) In honor of all the wonderful mothers out there, we are making our items cheaper! That's always good. This time, it's just for you!

All you need do is go to our online boutique, which you may know very well and you may not, but you can click on the image below to be transported to a world of paper crafting goodness. I've added a lot of stock to get ready for this sale so you should be able to find lots of good stuff. If you see something that is snatched up before you can get it, or if you want a sketchbook made out of paper you saw used for magnets, email me so we can make sure you get the item you want during the sale. The sale is for one day only, and you can only use the coupon code once so I want to make sure you get what you want!

Click on the image above to be taken directly to the Ehle Custom Stationery website. THIS SALE IS FOR ONE DAY ONLY! I don't mean to yell, but that's very important to know. The sale will last the entirety of May 8 give or take a few hours. I think we all know how I am with time restrictions. I'm always fashionably late. Don't wait until the last minute,though...  Be sure to use the coupon code mday50 to get the sale. This will save you 50% off your order of $20 or more. You must use the coupon code to get the sale. If you have any trouble, just contact me and we can get things figured out.

Otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's Day, and I'm sending all kinds of good thoughts your way. Here's to Moms!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Let the Freebies Begin!

Come one, come all! The day has finally come for our Water for Elephants Giveaway! Huzzah! This was a fun giveaway for me because 1) ECS loves elephants! and 2) I love themes. :) I am a theme hound, and it was really fun looking for supplies to make this week's giveaway. Here, ladies and germs, is what we are giving away in honor of a fabulous-looking movie, Water for Elephants:

Here we have a set of 5 matchbook notebooks with 15 pages of recycled newsprint paper in them. We've got some cycling elephants, some circus poster taglines and the beautiful trapeze artist alongside her elephant pals (her elephant pals are on the reverse side :)). This one has rules just like the last one did so keep on reading!

Rule #1:
Like Ehle Custom Stationery on Facebook. If you already have, fabulous. This just makes it easier for me to find and notify people when they win. Click the link below to be taken to the ECS facebook fan page:

 Also, by becoming a fan on facebook, that's another way to keep up with the doings of ECS like sales, new products and shows!

Rule #2:
Let me know which act it is that brings or would bring you to the circus. I'll start. I love the animals. The boring ones are okay, but mostly I like the dangerous ones. The elephants with their sharp tusks, the lions and tigers with their man-flesh-eating-ness and the alligators who also eat fleshy men. I love the danger in it. :) Now you. What is your favorite act at the circus?

So leave a comment on this blog post telling me all about your circus habits, and I can't wait to read them! Plus you'll be entered in the drawing. :) Also, if you join the Ehle Custom Stationery Ehlebots, there are discussion boards and other ways to get savings and new product reveals. We've just got all sorts of stuff going on!

The giveaway starts as soon as this is posted (if you're reading it now, that's now!) and ends Sunday night. Joey and I will be picking a winner Monday morning sometime so tune in then to see the winner! Just remember: elephants are our friends, R-Pat and Rees are tremendous actors and unfortunately good-looking people, and, hence, you should go see Water for Elephants. :) Ciao, bellas!   

I Can Yudu, Can You?

I have FINALLY got myself a Yudu. I've been watching these things for a LOOOOONG time, and seeing as there's no way I'm ever buying myself a craft something for $400, I didn't have one. Until yesterday... Being an exclusive member of Michael's email list, I get these awesome coupons from time to time. Yesterday, for ONE DAY ONLY, the Yudus were $99.99! That's hundreds of dollars in savings! I ran right out and got one. I stood right by the Yudus while the lady looked to see if they had any left. She was finally able to scrounge one up, and it was still in the shipping box! I'm still getting shivers thinking how close I was to having to run all around town looking for one of these things. Oooohhh...

Anyway, I got it, brought it home and immediately opened it and started trying to make something. I then proceeded to immediately mess it up. First of all, I'm not entirely taking the blame on this one because the instructions are crap. I should know, instructions are my living. They truly suck. So I effed up the only emulsion sheet I had. Scott had to run out and get one on the way home from work. He's such an awesome husband. :) Then I found out I needed some things that, for some stupid reason, were not included in the box. Okay, check this out. You put emulsion on the screen to make the image. You need emulsion remover to clean the screen of the emulsion ick. THE DAMN YUDU DOESN'T COME WITH EMULSION REMOVER! And I didn't know I needed it until I got the damn thing home and read the instructions. So then I had to run out and get that. :) The good thing is that I was able to find and print a 40% coupon. So there, Michaels. Take that.

So we're now at the point where I have watched several videos online to try to figure out what the heck I'm doing since the directions sucked. I have some new emulsions sheets and emulsion remover now so I can clean the screen I effed up the first time. After all that mess, it was pretty easy to do. I got my screen burned and inked.

The Yudu originally only comes with an adult t-shirt platen so I had to improvise to make this shirt for Joey. It worked just fine, though sticking the back of the shirt to the platen (like you're supposed to) and sticking a piece of cardboard (with double stick tape on the inside of the front and back so the cardboard doesn't move around in the shirt) in the baby tee. I just had to make sure the image on the screen was in the spot I wanted on the shirt.

Then you just make a couple runs over the t-shirt with the ink and you have a screen-printed tee! This one came out super awesome for my first try. The bottom's a little smudgy, but I wasn't sure how much pressure to put on the squeegee when I was pulling the ink through. I didn't push hard enough the first time, and then I lifted the mesh screen to see the shirt. Don't do that. :) So, after that, I made a couple more passes with the ink pushing much harder this time, and it went over it like buttah. I got this design from Michaels. They sell their own art transparencies, but you can also make your own designs. I might have to try making my own next time.

I'll admit I'm slightly concerned about the cost of maintaining my Yudu because emulsion sheets are 2 for $20, and you have to burn a new screen for each image you want. Unless you're doing bulk screenprinting or are an enthusiastic crafter (like myself), I probably wouldn't recommend it. You're essentially paying $10 plus the cost of whatever you're screenprinting. It's up to you whether it's worth it or not, but I just like the idea of making my own designs on t-shirts and such. I LOVE tote bags, and this will be perfect for that. Also, I just had another thought. I can screenprint my own notecard caddies! Holy moley, I love the sound of that idea.

I think Joey liked his new shirt. It made him run around like a crazy person. :) He looks so stylish in his mock designer tee!

Ehle Custom Stationery's First-Ever BLOG GIVEAWAY! (that means free...)

Yes, you read that right. In the spirit of getting my butt in gear and getting back to business, I'm giving away my first-ever prize package. Exciting, right? I'm pretty darn excited about it! Oh, but not only is this a wonderful prize package, it includes a couple exclusive products that aren't even for sale, yet!

But now for the rules. I'm not just going to GIVE it away. You have to do something for it. Don't worry, it's not hard.

• Rule #1: Like Ehle Custom Stationery on Facebook. Here you can get all sorts of news from ECS and get pics of what is currently in the works. You'll also find some sales announced here from time to time. If you have already liked us, fabulous! If not, I won't make you feel bad, but I will look away while you head on over to Facebook to like us. I'll pretend I didn't notice you hadn't liked us already... (you can click on the image below to go to the Ehle page on Facebook)

• Rule #2: Leave a comment on this entry letting me know where your notecards go. Where do you send them? If you don't write letters, to whom do you gift them? If you're not in it for the notecards at all, if you're more of a magnet, book or gift tag kind of person, where do they go? I thought it would be fun to know where all my products have been. I can't wait to hear about it!

With that said, I feel like I can now reveal the prize... curtain's being raised, you're on the edge of your seat... ta da!

 For the lucky winner, they receive 3 ECS original design notecards, 2 of which are not in the shop, yet. There is also 1 set of ECS bubble magnets and a lovingly hand-stitched pocket notebook also not in the shop, yet. I had a really fun time choosing what to give away, and these notecards are seriously some of my favorites, the banner one, especially. Here's the breakdown:

• (1) Thank You Card w/ envelope (invitation size)
• (1) Hello Friend Banner Card w/ envelope (invitation size)
• (1) Party Penguin Card w/ handmade self-adhesive envelope
• (1) 4-piece Creamy Soup Magnet Set
• (1) Breezy Trees 20 page Pocket Notebook

To recap, in order to win this prize package, you must 1) Like ECS on Facebook (see Rule #1) AND 2) Leave a comment letting me know where your ECS products have been or will go. It's easy, right?! All entries are due by Wednesday, April 6 at midnight. Don't worry about the time zone, I'm sure it'll be close enough. :) On Thursday morning (April 7), I will put all the names in a random drawing, and I'll let Joey pick a name for me. I will do my best to read the name before he tries to eat it.

If you have any questions at all for me, please let me know. I'm really excited about my first giveaway, and I hope you guys have fun with it! Good luck!

FINALLY!... after 2 whole years...

Yep, that's right... I FINISHED MY SOCKS! After 2+ years of staring at those socks wishing they would just finish themselves, I finally did it! I'll be the first to admit the 1st sock has a few mistakes in it, but I dare you to find them. :) Usually, everything I make has at least 1 mistake in it, and I like to make a 'Where's Waldo' out of it. Fun times. :) The 2nd sock is gloriously flawless, of course. It's taken this long to make them so one would hope I've learned something since then.

I got this pattern from a book called Sock Innovation by Cookie A. Cookie is a nutcase. She designs all these whacked-out socks for the fun of it! She also tries to teach the reader to design like she does, but I'd sooner stick a pole in my eye. Her designs are incredibly cable-intensive as you can see from the pattern I did. Most of them look like that. I'd rather torture myself making them than designing them. Making them is the fun part, anyway.

 Looking at these socks from any angle shows something different. There are 2 sets of cables that wrap around the fronts and sides of the socks and one entirely separate cable that goes down the back. I made these out of some great yarn from Knit Picks (that they don't make anymore, argh) that is 75% merino wool and 25% nylon. Talk about heaven on my feet. :) Oh, and when looking at these pictures, please be sure to ignore my fabulously pasty white legs. And, yes, I glow in the dark.

Ooh, in this one, I even blend in with the white wall! But, wait, ignore that, please. You see nothing! In short, I friggin' love these socks. I have a pair of ballet slippers that I absolutely hated it when you could see my socks through the top. These new socks look great showing through the top. As a matter of fact, today I wore these out and deliberately made them visible. Look at me and my fashion sense go!

Despite the fact that this Cookie woman is gloriously mad, I have plans to make more of her socks. Of course, the next pair I make will also be for ME as I am putting in the work. I'm being selfish, but with these patterns, I feel I deserve it. Then I have the inevitable birthday and 'something' presents that I make up because I just want to make more socks. This has been the longest 2-whatever years of my life, but I deserve these socks! I worked hard for them. :)

Etsy Rocks My World: Serpenthes

I got my etsy order yesterday! It's only 1 of 2, but I was really looking forward to this one. You may think it strange that I ordered notecards since I make them, but I do have a couple reasons for that. One, it's no fun making a card and then immediately using it. Second, I love it when I share a hobby with someone. Plus, there are just some people out there with wicked awesome designs. And that brings me to Serpenthes! She has the most amazing illustrations that I just had to buy some cards. I bought 2 sets, and they have the coolest octopus images on them. I still can't believe someone can draw like.

Even the note she sent me has a great illustration of the day of the dead! Even her business cards are a work of art. I was just blown away by what I got. Ooh, she also sent me a free gift! I got the postcard in the middle of the steampunk girl on her bicycle, which was GREAT because I was looking at buying that one, too, but it was only available in print form. I will remind you that one of the great things about etsy is custom orders! Probably about 50% of my orders have been customized for what I want. The octopus with the heart was a regular listing, but I asked for a custom order of the girl walking her pet octopus (that's me, by the way ;)). Serpenthes had a collection called Animal Variety Show that included people and their quirky pets, like this one. While I did like the other ones, I could NOT get enough of that little girl walking her octopus. I had to have it. Lots of it. A whole set dedicated just to them!

Needless to say, I will DEFINITELY be getting more cards from Serpenthes, and some of you will, no doubt, be seeing them firsthand! I've already sent one out. These are definitely some notecards you canNOT get anywhere else! And that's what I love about etsy. Etsy makes you the cool kid in school. :) No one will ever be wearing the same dress to the prom because we got ours from etsy.

If you are interested in some of Serpenthes' artwork, as I know you are after that GLOWING review, check out her etsy shop at Serpenthes' Etsy Shop. She's got some wonderful artwork and notecards, and she has some great invitations. I wish I had known about those octopus wedding invitations and save the dates when I got married. They rock. :)

Also, check out the Animal Variety Show collection! I'm seriously thinking about getting that one now that I have Wanda and Sid. That's what I named them. :)