May 2013 SOTM

As I mentioned in the last post, our May SOTM marks the end of our Stamp of the Month program.While endings always make me feel a little sad, I have to say that these cards make me feel very happy!  I love this stamp and I love the bright colours Roxy & I played with to make these samples!

Here's the cards I made:

If this next one looks familiar, it's because I used my own technique which was featured by Ranger here.  It's a simple technique that is perfect for this stamp!  I added some fun epoxy dots by MME for texture and a stamp that's an old fave by Hero Arts to finish it off. 

 

Roxy made these two cards- you can read more details about them on her blog (link in the side bar of the blog).  I love them both!

Just wait until you hear how she made this background... so fun! I won't spoil it though, go see on Roxy's blog!

I hope you enjoyed our samples and our fabulous final Stamp Of the Month!  If you create something with this stamp, I'd sure love to see it... feel free to share a link in the comments on this post!

May 2013 {FINAL SOTM}

Introducing our FINAL Stamp of the Month, a gorgeous floral silhouette image by Magenta!   

In February 2003, over 10 years ago, I started featuring a SOTM at Creative Accents.  My very first stamp was by Magenta so I thought it would be cool to finish off with a stamp by Magenta as well!  Much has changed over the years, but Magenta is still a great Canadian company that produces beautiful rubber stamps!  I look forward to creating with this one some more, but for now I have just one simple card to share with you (a tribute to how busy life is right now!). 

A copy of this stamp is in the hands of one of our faithful design team members, and between us we should have more samples to share with you soon!  As you can see from this card, it's a perfect image in it's simplicity!  I've paired it with patterned papers by Glitz & Echo Park.  The sentiment is an old fave, also by Magenta.

This stamp is 35% off for SOTM members, no extras are available at this time... but we have lots of other great stamps in the store and they are ALL on sale as we work on reducing inventory! 

Storewide Savings- 20% off

We are continuing on with our inventory reduction as we prepare to close the store at the end of June before Tara's wedding (***we are still hoping for a buyer though, so please talk to us if you are seriously interested***)! 

We are still expecting a few orders with new arrivals and will do our best to accommodate special orders of new products in the coming weeks.  If there is anything specific you want us to bring in, please let us know as soon as possible.

Please note that we will not be re-ordering products you see on the shelves, so don't hesitate to pick up the items you want when you see them!
This week:
SAVE 20% on
ALMOST EVERYTHING 

{the small print}

The following items are NOT included in the storewide sale

• all cardstock
• all adhesives
• new arrivals
• special orders
• classes
• class kits
• some specially priced items

April 12 Tags of 2013

On Wednesday night we had our April 12 Tags Drop In, where we got to create fabulous tags inspired by Tim Holtz and try out a new faux patina technique with his new Distress Paints! So much fun!

You can see all the details on Tim's blog with step by step tutorials for the techniques here!

I took my photo this morning and I think my turquoise background might be a tad distracting LOL (it's my fabulous We R Memory Keepers album) but oh well...

here's a close up showing off the technique we did on the numbers for a rusty patina look, very fun!  It also shows my fortune... some of us went for Chinese food before we got inky, so we thought it would be fun to include our fortunes on the tags!

There's still a few days left to check out Tim's tutorial and play along!  I'm hoping I can find some time to browse through all the entries soon, there's always some great inspiration! 

Clean Sweep Cards

Just a quick post to share a couple Clean & Simple cards I've made that are perfect for our Clean Sweep Challenge over at the Seriously Creative Challenge Blog!

First up is a card I made with extras from our April POTM kit, featuring Basic Grey's fun Bow Ties collection!  When I saw this bug paper, I instantly thought of my set of get well stamps from Lawn Fawn and knew this sentiment would be perfect with them!  The stickers and vellum sticker tape are also from this collection, love it!

This card I made using some pretty papers by Pebbles- the sentiment is a printed banner, which was fabulous for making a quick but pretty card!

   The challenge this month is:

Clean Sweep: Create either a "clean" style of layout/project or make a clean sweep of your stash at home! This challenge will stay open until after our Fiesta, so will end Monday, May 6 :)

 We'd love to have you join us!  Check out more details and inspiration here.

FIESTA

2013 will be our 7th and FINAL Scrapbook & Cards Fiesta Celebration... join us for a fantastic time!

The party goes from 6pm -Midnight on Friday, May 3 and
from 10 am-Midnight on Saturday, May 4!
Space is limited, get your tickets soon!
Tickets are $45 and include:
· fabulous goodie bags!
· $5 donation to BC Cancer Society
· Mexican snacks & Margaritas punch Friday night
· Taco Salad Bar Lunch & a Delicious Dinner on Saturday
· Entry for door prizes (everyone wins!)
· Exclusive store specials
· Space to create (2 per table)
· A whack at our fabulous Paper Crafting PINATA Friday night
· and more...

Tickets are available NOW in the store!

April SOTM

Whew... I'm back with our SOTM samples before mid month ;)  I'm gonna call that progress!  This post will be a short one, lots of pictures, few words!  Sarah & I used this fabulous Hero Arts stamp together with "boy crazy" papers by MME!  Both of us played a bit with new Distress Paints too- so fab & fun!

Here's the fab cards Sarah made:

And here's my quick ones:

 

All great fun for boy cards... but this stamp would look fab on girly cards too!  I think I'll be using it a bunch for birthday cards, but I love how you can use the different parts of this stamp for other occasions too... and scrapbooking as well :)  Hope you like the stamp and our ideas with it!

Easter Wishes {12 Tags of March 2013}

Quick Post today to share with you the tags we made at our March 12 Tags of 2013 drop in a couple weeks ago!  It's always a fun get-together with a group of girls, trying out the techniques in Tim's monthly tag! 

Next month we'll be doing it in our new, um, cozier space here in the store!  We'll be working hard this weekend to get this downsize completed, so will be CLOSED all weekend- Good Friday through Easter Monday! 

I won't tell ya much about these- you can find all the step by step stuff on Tim's blog, we just changed a few minor details... and made mini tags with the leftover bits (had fun playing with the new Distress Paint here, too!).

Here's Mom's tags:

and mine:

and a close up to show you some of the fun textures:

My usual neutral background I photograph on was um, unavailable due to the mess in the studio right now, but this background is paper from a project in process... wedding invitations!

We are STILL OPEN until 5:30 pm on Thursday, and we've got a great Easter EGGstravaganza Sale on right now too!  PLUS some great Clearance deals to help us with the downsize!  Hope to see you soon!

March 2013 SOTM

Finally... I`m sharing with you our March SOTM samples!  Our stamp this month is a Seed Packet Background by Stampendous- perfect for your projects with  spring & summer flowers!

Here`s the sample board (notice my glittery letters... turned out pretty, yes?  I forgot, however, how much I dislike working with glitter LOL.  This was cut from my Silhouette using their double sided adhesive... a bit finicky, but turnout out alright in the end!):

And here's the cards I made:

And Janet's projects:

We used the Prairie Chic Collection by BoBunny as our patterned paper/ colour inspiration for our projects.  Hope you've enjoyed them! 

Why the Quiet Blog?!

Just a quick post to say SORRY for how quiet the blog has been lately... I have a few reasons I'll share with you today, working backwards...

We're very busy in the store working on downsizing our retail space to about half the current size, as we were a few years ago. Sales have been down, rent is high and much of the space holds supplies that are not for sale (classroom supplies, etc.) so we're working to condense things and make more excellent use of the smaller space.  We'll still have a classroom & crop area, it will just be a bit smaller (but we're planning on making it flexible with some moving shelf units so we can fit in larger groups, too!). We're hoping to get this done by the end of the month... yikes.

That would be easier if I wasn't flat out sick right now with a cold/flu bug... ugh.  I'm feeling pretty useless when it comes to getting work done and spending a lot of time in bed so I can get my energy back!

Previous to getting sick... I've been a little distracted! 

My BIG news is that I'm getting married to a wonderful man!

My honey made the journey to BC from North Carolina at the beginning of March and we're planning an August wedding!  I couldn't be happier, except if I didn't have to deal with being sick and downsizing the store right now ;) 

Anywho, that's why things have been so quiet here lately!  I finally got photos taken of the rest of our SOTM samples and will hopefully post them on the blog in the next few days!  There have been a few other quick projects I've done as well that I'd like to share!

A Peek at our March SOTM

 With all the busyness (and NEW ARRIVALS) last week, I didn't get a chance to finish up my Stamp Of The Month sample board... so today I'm sharing one card with you!  I plan to be back tomorrow to show you the rest!  This card showcases a fun background stamp by Stampendous- a perfect companion for FLOWERS, which will help us bring in spring :)

This card is also my contribution to Tim Holtz's Tattered Florals Challenge!  I cut the flower from paper by BoBunny and text paper by Bazzill which I'd inked up with Distress Stains.  I then added Distress Ink to all the cut flowers and layered them together while shaping them.  I finished off the entire card with a misting of Perfect Pearls Mist in Turquoise. 

Page Maps Challenge

My friend Tanya & I decided to challenge each other to actually USE the 2013 PageMaps calendar this year, instead of just looking at and being inspired by it :)

True to form, I got this layout done at the last minute, finishing at the end of January... not getting it posted until the end of February (this gives me a bit of play time to get the February page posted, right?).  I used the 'bonus' sketch at the beginning of the calendar with papers by BoBunny & Authentique, with some Pink Paislee & Crate Paper embellishments!

12 Tags of 2013 {Jan & Feb}

Yikes... January became February and I didn't get my January tags blogged.  Today I realized that February is nearly over so I better get 'er done! 

So, to start off, I present to you my February 2013 Tag:

I had fun with this one, taking Tim's very Valentinesy (I'm gonna pretend that's a real word!) tag and tweaking it so it was still about LOVE but not so much about Valentine's Day :)  Shades of green & blue did the trick, and I used some fun (previously uninked) images from my Tim Holtz stamp stash together with a frame stamp by Hampton Art Stamps as my focal point.  We used a bottle cap & glossy accents for an embellishment, but mostly followed Tim's fabulous tutorial found here.

Here's the tag's Mom & I made in January:

 Mom's tag used some Basic Grey brads to add the date.  Mine (below) used some random embellishments from my stash...

both were inspired by Tim Holtz's January Tag you can find here.

I'm already looking forward to seeing Tim's March tag :)  We'll be hosting another 12 Tags Drop In on Saturday, March 16 at 1pm and we'd love to have you join us!  Those of us who can will stick around and CROP until late that night- should be a fun, creative day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

 If you visit our store or blog with any sort of regularity, you know that we LOVE Distress Ink!  Today I wanted to share a Distress Ink heart with you as a special Valentine :)  Bonus- Distress Ink is one of the products we LOVE that is on sale this week 25% off! 

I used Distress Ink plus a few other fabulous products, to create a Valentine's Day card for my honey... it's simple, but inky and colourful :)  Hope it makes him smile!

While we're talking about Distress Ink- we'd love to have you join us this Saturday, Feb 16 at 11am for our next Technique Tags with Tara class- featuring Distress Ink!  All supplies are provided for $15, but you may want to bring your own Distress Ink pads & inking tools if you have them to cut down sharing time ;)

On Sale until Saturday are these 14 Products We LOVE:

Celebrating the products we LOVE! 14 of our favourite items, 25% off! 1.  BLING 2.  Alphabets (stickers, dies…) 3.  My Stik Adhesives 4.  Tim Holtz Distress Ink 5.  Glitter & Glitter Glue 6.  6x6 and 8x8 paper pads 7.  Kraft Core Cardstock 8.  Dylusions Sprays 9.  Spellbinders Dies 10.  Ribbon & Twine 11.  POTM page kits (from 2012-buy 2 or more to save) 12.  All Stamps 13.  District Market Products 14.  Stencils PLUS- New BoBunny is now in stock (not included in this week's sale!)  Get it while it's HOT!