Weekend Sales and Specials!

The weekend is my favorite time to shop. Hopefully it's your's, too, because not only am I having my birthday celebration special (see the post below this one), but Heather over at A Scrappy Design is having a great 15% off sale! She just added some adorable tree embellishments, and her Halloween embellies are a must-see.

Happy Shopping! Tessa

Happy Birthday to Me...

My birthday is coming up, and to celebrate in the shop, I am having a little contest. Any order placed from today through Monday, August 31st will be entered into a drawing to win a $10.00 gift certificate to Precocious Paper. Good luck and happy shopping!

My Sketchy Thursdays Layout

Hello! Here is my Sketchy Thursdays layout (for details on how you can play along, see Diana's blog). I don't often have this much "white space" in a layout, so this was a fun exploration of that design style. And I used one of my favorite color schemes again, red/blue/black/white. Thanks for looking!

Some Exciting News!

My lovely sister and her awesome hubby have been visiting, plus school started yesterday for my boys, so I've been a little busy. But - I just had to steal a few minutes tonight for this post.

I have some exciting news! I am so blessed to be a member of A Scrappy Design's new design team! I've been stalking Heather's amazing Etsy shop and blog for awhile now, and I began doing her color challenges a few weeks ago. I was absolutely thrilled to find out that she chose me, and two other wonderful scrapbookers, to join her design team. I can't wait to work with her oh-so-fun products and share layouts. This is going to be a fantastic creative adventure, I just know it.

Here's a LINK to the official announcement on her blog, where you can also find links to the other design team members.

And for a note about Precocious Paper specifically, I added several new fabric and felt flower designs recently, as well as some new paper bag albums. I would love for you to check them out.

Happy scrapping! Tessa

Been Busy Creating!

Wow, it's been a week since I posted last! I've been busy...scrapbooking, cleaning and organizing, and making new things for the shop. I have several new flower sets coming, including Halloween, Fall, and Christmas designs. I also made three new paper bag albums which will all be listed by this weekend. Wanna peek?

I'm off to finish a big order of beautiful flowers for a wedding. Have a wonderful day! Tessa

Blog Love - The Everyday Scrapper

Precocious Paper is featured over at The Everyday Scrapper! Check out my interview with Catherine and sample layouts she made using Precocious Paper embellies. If you participate in the August challenge - using BLING on a layout - you could win a $10.00 gift certificate to my shop.

Enjoy! Tessa

Scrapbooking

I recently decided that I needed to do more scrapbooking for myself, so I did some research and found some challenge blogs online that would give me the inpiration and deadlines I needed for motivation. I've scrapped several new pages in the past weeks, and here are a few that feature products from my shop....

I post all of my layouts in my flickr photostream, which you can see here. Do you have a favorite challenge blog or site that you follow?

Coming soon...Birthday Bash Specials for the shop! Stay tuned!

Have a great day! Tessa

And the winner is...

The winner of my 1000th Sale Celebration Drawing is:

*** giannasmom! ***

Congratulations! And to show my appreciation even more, all orders from August 5th will be receiving a free gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Magazine Feature

Precocious Paper is being featured in the premier issue of Modern Handmade Child! It's a free, online magazine that features handmade items perfect for children and family. My Woodland Creature Mini Note Cards have been included (and are for sale currently in my shop). It looks like a beautiful publication - do check them out! If you are interested in purchasing some of these mini cards, please let me know or head over to my shop. They are only $2.50 for 3 cards, and as you can see, I have several!

Have a wonderful day, Tessa

Treasury Nod

Are you ready for crisp air and the crackle of leaves? I am! Fall is my favorite season, and this treasury makes me long for October even more. Thanks to Kelly of thegreenlizard for including me! Check out her eco-friendly shop for beautiful finds and this eco-friendly autumn treasury.

Have a great day! Tessa

Duh-da-da-duh!

*** 1000! ***

Today I reached 1000 sales! And that means if you make a purchase today, you could be getting your Precocious Paper goodies for free!

See you at the shop! Tessa

Inspired by Color

When I sit down to scrapbook, I usually organize the materials I am going to use based on color. I generally pull the colors straight from the photos I am using. Through my Etsy/Twitter/Facebook travels I happened upon Etsy seller ascrappydesign's blog. As she does every week, she was extending a color challenge to her blog readers. Color challenges are perfect for me, since that is just how my brain works when I scrapbook. So, one night my hubby watched the kids and I scrapped this page, based on purple and grey:




The photo is a self-portrait I took last year and played with on picnik.com. I love the Orton-ish feature! Imade it black and white to go with the grey. I used grey cardstock as my background, then added Juneberry Wine Glimmer Mist in sprays across the paper. Then I took my metallic silver paint dauber and made polka dots on the cardstock. I found the dark purple damask cardstock in the Luxury stack by DCWV. I used two lace flowers from my Etsy shop - "silver" and "plum purple". Then I added paper hydrangeas by Prima and lots of rhinestones! I finished the page with a metal photo corner and purple sequin butterflies. The title is American Craft's Thickers.


While scanning Facebook this morning, I saw my page and wondered when I had uploaded it. Then I read the description and realized that ascrappydesign had posted it as her winner for the week! How fun! Thanks, ascrappydesign! I'm already working on this week's challenge: black, light blue, and red.

Birthday Card Album

I've had the pleasure of working on a really cute custom project - an album that would house birthday cards for a little girl named Natalie.

I constructed the album from chipboard, hand-cutting the chipboard to 8 inches by 10 inches. I then rounded the corners with my handy-dandy Corner Chomper (I love that thing!). Then I hand-cut 50 pages of cardstock to 8 inches by 10 inches and again used my Corner Chomper to round all the corners (that's 200 corners, by the way).

I used the "It's My Party" line of papers and embellishments by Heidi Grace (which has been discontinued and is very hard to find). For the cover, I used a shimmery piece of green paper with velvet embossing for the background. Then I used the birthday cake paper to make a border, edging it in gorgeous and fun ruffled, polka dot ribbon.

I used glittered chipboard letters to add Natalie's name. I also added a hand-made cupcake embellishment.

To make the cupcake embellishments (of which there are dozens throughout the album) I hand-punched circles from silver glitter paper and adhered them to hand-punched scalloped circles cut from white cardstock. Then I hand-punched the cupcake wrappers from a corrugated white cardstock and the cupcake tops from various colors of glitter paper.

The cupcake tops are adhered with dimensional adhesive. Each cupcake was topped with a crystal rhinestone. On every other page there is one of these cupcakes, paired with a coordinating ribbon. I staggered the placement of the embellishments so that the ribbons extended from the pages all around the album.

On the other pages I added strips of patterned papers in stripes and polka dots and cardstock stickers. To finish the album, I punched 5 holes through the covers and the pages (that's 260 holes) and added book binding rings. I then tied dozens of ribbons on the rings. I think the album is super cute, festive, bright, and cheerful! I'm sure Natalie and her mom will enjoy it for a long time to come.

If you would like a custom album of your own, please don't hesitate to contact me!