Heading to the Source

A Paper Lover's Selection: Metallic Stamp Pads, Sparkly Gel Pens in Holiday Colors, Holiday Flowers Kit, Star Making Kit, Postcards for Invitations, and an Accordian Cityscape Kit

When I am not thinking about fiber, I am often thinking about paper. While I don't do quite as much of it as I used to, some of my favorite crafty things to do involve paper. I've never been a scrapbooker (that has always seemed like it required a great deal of dedication that I don't usually have to any one thing), but I love rubber stamps, origami, and using paper to make interesting shapes and decorations. I consider myself fortunate that I live in a city that is the origin one of the best paper arts stores anywhere -- Paper Source. When I first got to Chicago they had one location in a hole in the wall near the brown line. Now not only have they expanded to a few other places in Chicago, they've also gone national and you can order online. But I still absolutely love making a little pilgrimage to the original store every now and again.

Every year, one of my favorite events is our holiday party. I love to fill my home with friends and cookies and holiday decorations. Last year, life got in the way of us pulling it together, so this year I am back with a vengeance. Last weekend we spent a few hours raiding Crate & Barrel for some of their lovely Christmas decorating items and today I headed out to Paper Source for supplies to put together my invitations. And of course, I found just a little bit more than I could leave in the store.

Lately I'm becoming more and more of a sucker for kits -- I love it when I can buy something that has all the pieces and all I need to do is cut and assemble. I don't end up with a lot of extra stuff I don't need and I get to enjoy the fun part without spending a lot of time hunting down all the component parts. Apparently, I'm not the only one, because Paper Source now has more of these wonderful sorts of things than I ever remember them having before. Basically, if you have a bone folder, an x-acto knife and some PVA adhesive, you're good to go on a variety of cool things. In fact, it was almost hard for me to limit myself to three...

1. Holiday Flower Kit -- also labelled as the Holiday Magnolia paper flower kit. This nifty little package is chock full of red and gold papers, floral wire and floral tape and instructions and templates for creating a whole boquet of winter magnolias. I think these will be perfect decorations for my holiday cookie table and as small accents for places that need a little extra color.

2. 3-D Star Kit. This kit is pretty simple -- 40 sheets of pre-cut square silver paper combined with templates and instructions for creating a multitude of heavenly objects. Since this makes 20-40 stars of varying shapes and forms, I'm thinking they'll be hanging from windows and over our mantlepiece once I find a little silver cording. Celestial origami! I just couldn't resist.

3. Holiday Accordian Cityscape Kit to complement the stars over my mantle piece, I'm going to make sure this nifty little city is living underneath them. With a glue stick and a snowflake punch included almost all I have to do is pull out the instructions and get started.

The rest of the goodies are for creating my party invitations. Inspired by a great new set of stamps from Julie (in addition to making all those fab felted bags, she also sells some awesome Hero Arts stamps from her Stamping Online store I decided that this year's invites will be a postcard format -- and will probably be this weekend's big craft project.

P.S. to folks asking about the cashmere scarf pattern -- the pattern was actually purchased from the Hunt Valley Cashmere folks, so I don't feel that I can share any of the pattern details on line. However, Hunt Valley's phone number is 410-298-8244 and the pattern is called the "Triangle Lace Scarf" by Marylin Merbach should you want to try to get a copy of your own. I have no idea if she will sell them without the cashmere, since I bought mine as a kit.