Little Pink Studio

In case you're ready to start making your Valentines

Hello! I can hardly believe how fast January is just flying by us, and I know on everyone's mind is Valentine's, right? :)

 I just finished listing several new, and super cute packaging supplies in the shop. First up, these little boxes with the heart cut out. They're the perfect size for treats, goody bags, Valentine's, cards, or even ATC's! 

Lovely paper mache hearts imported from Germany. They make such a sweet little gift box, and can be altered to your heart's content. These boxes have been made in Germany for about a 100 years, and sadly, they have decided to stop making them. (and the eggs,too! I'll list the eggs very soon) I was able to import a few of the boxes, but once they're gone, I don't believe I will be able to get them again. 

Cardboard sliding boxes! Love these! They're a great little blank canvas waiting on you to paint them, collage them, etc. Use them for treat boxes, Valentines, ATC's, or even create a little mini album to go inside! They're much better than the average match box. :)

Fries, anyone? I'm loving these white, blank french fry cartons! They're just perfect for all kinds of sweet packaging needs. You can add a cute label and treats for your party favors or goody bags!

In about five minutes I added a bit of vintage lace, a little seam binding, and a vintage millinery flower, and there you have a perfectly romantic holder for your Valentines! 

All of the new packaging materials can be found right here.

I also recently added some lovely new twine, which is perfect for wrapping around your Valentine's. (or any other package!)

 My favorite is the new red, white, and pink. 

The new twine can be found right here.

And lastly, we added some fun new paper bags as well.

Kraft paper, and polka dots? Yes, please! 

 And more polka dots. (in red and pink) The bags can be found here. 

Those are all of the new items. I'm working on some fun new kits, too. I hope to have those ready very soon, since January is uh, almost over. Sheesh!

Cerri xoxo

How about a Tuesday tutorial?

Hello! I can hardly believe how fast January is flying by already! I would like to keep up with the Tuesday tutorials I started during the holiday season, and to start off the year I'm reposting a little project I created for Joli Paquet a couple of years ago. It might give you a jump start on thinking about your Valentines. So, let's get started.

Do you have lots of scraps of lace and trims? This project is a great project to use those scraps and make some pretty Valentines! I sewed my Valentines, but you can certainly make this project using your favorite adhesives if you prefer not to sew.

 

Gather your supplies:

 

Canvas sheet (I used Frederix canvas that can be found at Michaels, but you can also use cardstock if you prefer)

 

paint

 

Scraps of vintage laces and trims

Coordinating seam binding or ribbon

glue dots

Sewing machine (or your favorite adhesives if you prefer not to sew)

 

foam brush

 

paint brush

 

vintage china doll OR your favorite images (you can do a search for the china dolls on etsy if you don't have one in your stash, I saw several sellers with them)

 

Hot glue or othe strong adhesive (I use The Ultimate glue)

Satin wings

Begin by cutting a heart shape out of your canvas or card stock. Then brush a layer of paint onto the heart. And set aside to dry.

While your canvas is drying gather your favorite scraps of lace and trim. Cover your heart with glue dots that will help you keep your laces in place while you sew them on. Lay your trims over the heart in whatever manor pleases you.

 

Begin sewing your scraps to your heart. I stitched around and around the heart until my stitches had covered the whole thing. I did my best to go in a heart shape, but as you can see, that didn't always happen and since I was using a light colored thread that was ok.

 

Once your trims are completely sewed on, you'll want to trim off the excess. I think it is easiest to do this from the back so that you can just follow along with the shape of the canvas. Save those scraps for making more Valentines!

Next, since my vintage china doll reminded me of a cherub, I wanted to give it some wings. To add polka dots, just dip the end of your paint brush in your paint and dot onto your wings.

 

Once your wings have been polka dotted to your liking you'll want to glue them to your china doll using either hot glue or another strong adhesive. I use The Ultimate glue. This glue is always in my studio as it will bond just about anything and takes the place of hot glue for me! Besides my Coccoina glues, it's my very favorite glue. You then attach the whole thing to your heart. I chose to place it in the center, but you can put it anywhere you would like!

Once my "cherub" is in place, I punched some holes in the top of the heart and strung the seam binding through. Tie a bow at the top and hang it somewhere it will make you happy. :)

That's it! A great way to use up those vintage scraps of lace! You could further embellish your scrappy Valentines with words, or vintage millinery flowers. 

This is another Valentine I made that year using the same technique, but with a vintage image instead. 

Have fun, and I would love to see any scrappy Valentines you have made. 

xo, Cerri

Sale!

Hello! Just popping in to let you know about the sale going on in the shop!  Most remaining Christmas items have been marked down 20-40% off, plus there are markdowns throughout the shop. Some items are hardly ever on sale, like our vintage dress forms, and that is a temporary reduction. However, many other items are marked down and will not be restocked. We have to clear out the old to bring in the new, right? Plus, I have some pretty fun things planned for the shop this year. :) (more on that later)

I have also been restocking the favorites that sold out during the holiday season, like the rose print bags. I've had quite a few of you waiting on those, and I'm happy to say they're finally back in stock! 

A few new items have trickled in, like these lovely nests, and gorgeous pompom trim!

The pompom trim comes in 3 lovely colors, ivory, pink, and aqua, but the ivory is my favorite. It looks as though it has been lightly tea stained. 

More restocks and new items are to come, and I'm currently gathering some lovelies for Valentines season. But for now, enjoy the sale and stock up on some of your favorites!

xo, Cerri

Happy New Year!

Happy 2012! I hope this new year brings happiness and love to all of you!

Much love, Cerri

Merry Christmas!

Need a last minute gift?

A Little Pink Studio gift certificate would make a lovely stocking stuffer for any creative gal on your list. Just click here to pick them out in any denomination. I can send them via email on Christmas Eve, or even schedule them to arrive in their email Christmas morning. (or whenever you prefer)

If you prefer a mailed certificate, it's still possible, but you will need to contact me for expedited shipping rates. 

Gift certificates are always a nice gesture, and who doesn't like to do a little after holidays shopping for themselves? :)

I still have one more tutorial I wanted to do for you, and I'll have it on here sometime this week. 

I hope you're enjoying this special time of year, and not getting to wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of it all. 

Much love, Cerri 

Merry making..

My niece and nephew visited us the past few days, and what a wonderful time we had. This is my sweet niece in her Santa hat. The kids coming to visit us every year during their Christmas break is a family tradition, and we've been doing it for years. I love this special time and look forward to it every year. This weekend we packed as much activity into 3 days as we possibly could. 

My niece and I dressed up and went to the original "Miracle on 34th Street" movie at our historical Tennessee theater. 

We baked lots of cookies and the kids decorated them. I love how cute kids do cookies and other sweet treats. 

And of course, we had to make plates and mugs to leave out for Santa, right?

My nephew wanted to make a spanish mug...

We also went to see this movie.  We snuggled up in the car and drove around looking at all of the pretty Christmas lights. (something I've been doing since my girls were little)

And of course, we had to have crafts. We made simple ornaments from kits picked out at Michaels this year to keep things easy, but the kids loved it nonetheless. 

But most importantly, we laughed, we snuggled, we loved each other, and we created memories that will hopefully last a lifetime. 

I hope you're enjoying this holiday week!

Cerri xoxo

Some favorite Christmas images

Hello! I hope you're having a lovely weekend in the middle of the Christmas rush. My niece and nephew are visiting us this weekend. Every year at Christmas they come and visit us and we do all sorts of fun things like crafts, going to and watching Christmas movies, and baking cookies.One of my favorite things we have been doing since my girls were little, is  to take blankets and hot cocoa, snuggle up in the car and drive around looking at all of the pretty Christmas lights.   It's always so nice. I'll admit, it's a little different this year without either one of my girls home, but Kenz will be home from college tomorrow! 

In case you're needing some images to make tags out of or to print and add to your packages, I thought I would share a few of my favorites. 

Sometimes I can't remember what I have already shared here, so please forgive me if I have posted any of these before. :)

Cerri xoxo

A better look, and textures...

We had some nice sunshine today so I snapped a quick photo of the finished product from yesterday's tutorial. You can see the sweet details a little better in this photo, I think. I also forgot to mention yesterday that I also colored the bird's cheeks with the same chalk pencil I used on the pixie.  

Anyway, my husband and I have been keeping our minds (and hands) busy with a massive project in our home. We're moving my studio again. You know how people like to rearrange their furniture? Well we prefer to rearrange our rooms. Seriously, this will be the 4th room my studio has been in. Hopefully, it will be the last. We are separating the shop from the studio and that is a welcome thing for me. It's so hard to keep a studio neat when you have inventory coming in all the time, plus inventory storage, and shipping materials, etc. You get the idea, especially those of you that also run little online shops. So, the shop will now have it's own room, and I get a new studio (complete with fireplace), and hubby gets a media/game room. All happy, right? Well except the fact that we always seem to take on these crazy ventures of ours around Christmas. 

So. The studio will look quite a bit different this time around. We covered the walls with fabric. Yep. Fabric. Unbleached muslin to be exact. 

To cover the seams, we used a very pale pink vintage ribbon, which created stripes. Each stripe is then covered with vintage lace. All of the lace pieces are different. 

This photo  is a little pale, but you get the idea. I absolutely adore this! It's so different, but so warm, and lovely. We thought of using burlap, but I think it would be too dark, and maybe too smelly, and too trendy. I wanted a white/neutral/cream studio with little pops of pink here and there.

Love this old umbrella. 

And this. This is by far the most colorful thing in the room. It's a stunning old door that was originally supposed to be a Christmas present, but I convinced my husband that I needed it now. (the black smudges are not really there in person. Not sure why they're there in the photo...) For now this door is leaning against a wall, but it will be 'holding' something special soon. 

So, there is still much work to be done. I'm hoping to at least have it workable by the time Kenz comes home from college on Sunday. So, wish me luck. I'll share more along the way. 

xo, Cerri

PS, There are still a few kits of each of the designs I have done, and they're all ready to ship. There's also some ornaments, and other great Christmas things in the shop. I will be closing up next week for a week or so to spend some time with my family, but there is plenty of time to get your things still and plenty of time for more Christmas crafting. :)

A Christmas Nest

Hello! Welcome to another Tuesday Tutorial, I hope you will enjoy this tutorial today, as I think it is one of my favorites so far!

I started out with this sweet bird shaped votive holder. I was able to purchase several of these earlier this year..you know one of those, "I'm sure I can use this for something" purchases. I knew I would probably want to create some sort of assemblage piece in it, but the ideas never came and I almost sold these in our yard sale this summer! So happy I didn't! Ok, so I'm not exactly sure where you would find something just like it, but I'm sure you can find a bird votive holder at Michaels, or maybe even your dollar stores? 

Anyway, to prep her, I added some Diamond Stickles. (Diamond and Platinum are my go to favorites every time..) I added a little to her wings, and as you can see in the top photo, I later went back and added quite a bit more to her tail feathers, etc. A Christmas bird does need to be glittered now, doesn't she? 

I then glued in a little paper shred to the area that would normally hold a candle.  

Save and print this sweet little gal onto cardstock. 

Cut her out and using a chalk pencil, give her some rosy cheeks. 

I added a little Platinum Stickles to a bleached bottle brush tree. (later I also added more Diamond stickles)

I also have these little vintage bottle brush tree picks, and I used two of those in this project. I trimmed them to size, and covered them with the Diamond Stickles. Now, if you don't have access to vintage tree picks, you could use some smaller bottle brush trees, lightly bleach them out so they're not such a dark green, and trim the bristles to give yourself a more narrow tree. 

I also glued some vintage pearls to the trees and then glued the trees and my little nest pixie into the paper shred. Add a few vintage pearls to the shred as well, and cover them with a bit of the Stickles. 

Here is another view so you can see how she is "leaning" against her white tree, and the smaller trees are behind her. 

I gave the bird a little bow using vintage tinsel trim, and added more Stickles to her, and she was finished! Now, I also think a little banner with a holiday sentiment would also be a cute addition to this Christmas nest, and I may add that later. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, I'm always happy to help. Also, if you have made any ornaments from any of the tutorials, I would LOVE to see, so please share!

I was able to put a handful of these kits together for you, and they're located in the shop.   The kit contains the lovely bird candle holder, a printed pixie, white bottle brush tree, and two vintage botttle brush tree picks, vintage pearls, and vintage tinsel! All you'll need is some strong adhesive and your favorite Stickles glitter glue. (or regular glitter and glue) 

Be back soon with some more ornament inspiration from around the web, er Pinterest that is.. :)

xo, Cerri