Banana Frog Blog

Circus Stories

Circus Stories is another set designed by Shimelle.

As or the inspiration, Shimelle says "I've forever wanted a journaling stamp that let me determine how many lines I wanted to write, so I started with something quite practical in mind before I got carried away with polka dots and the swirls of a calliope. Over the past couple years I've been following the artistic work of two friends who have collaborated to tell a fairy tale of a story, all set in a circus -- one writes the text and the other illustrates it, and the story is posted online just one page at a time (you can read the story at www.bustedwonder.com). Polka dots just remind me of the circus and in their story, the text often appears in boxes, and that's how it fell together."

Circus Stories is a really useful set. As Shimelle says, you can decide just how many lines of journaling you want. You can use the calliope swirls as a frame, a flourish or part or a journaling block. Also, the style goes really well with a font set I'll be showing you soon...

So just what have we been up to?!

It probably seems as if we have been very quiet lately, but I promise that we have been busy behind the scenes!

We launched Banana Frog to shops in the US at CHA. It was a crazy few days for Shimelle and I coping with jetlag, Shimelle losing her purse (with all money and credit cards), wearing a dress (ok, that was mainly me having to cope as I don't 'do' dresses!) and huge food portions (although strangely enough we didn't have a problem with the size of the Margarita's!). The show was great, we made lots of new friends and soon you will be able to get Banana Frog stamps internationally! Over the coming weeks we will showcase places you can get Banana Frog stamps from and introduce you to our new friends overseas!

With just one day to recover from CHA (or in my case, run round like a nutter sorting things out!), it was up to Birmingham for the UK trade launch of Banana Frog at Craft, Hobby and Stitch (or Stitches as it is generally known). Shimelle stayed in the US to teach at Scrapbowl and thankfully I had Trish on hand to keep me awake and feed me toffee bonbons! It was great to meet so many new people and stamps will be arriving for UK outlets soon. We will be showcasing companies over the coming weeks.

Apart from jetting around, we have also been busy designing. There are 10 new sets, with 5 by the lovely and talented Shimelle Laine! Over the coming days I will let you have a look at each of the stamps, tell you a bit about the inspiration behind them and also show how you can use them. They will be available to buy soon -from your local stockist and Banana Frog.

The first set to show you is by Shimelle and is called Paperchains.

I personally love this set. It reminds me of summer days, picnics, weddings and a feeling of happiness. However, according to Shimelle, "it was inspired by the little heart chains we make when we are children, when we would accordion fold the paper, then cut a heart and hopefully get it just so and it would fold out into a lovely chain. I like that the solid pieces mean you can add colour to the 'paper' in the chain, and you can use all the stamps on their own to make a title for a scrapbook page or you can mix it with your own drawing to create something to hang on the wall or send in the mail, lovely little people holding their paper chain messages."

Paperchains is ideal for cards as well as scrapbook pages, it can be cute or quirky or elegant. You choose!

Tomorrow we will look at Circus Stories, another of Shimelle's exciting new designs.

A little paper bag book

I have wanted to make a paper bag book of all the things I love for quite sometime and the new Pink Martini range, Pink Squirrel were the perfect colours to get me going.

Step 1: Fold your paper bags in half horizontally and stack them together with the open pages to the right hand side. These open sections form pockets that you can add extra card pages into.

Step 2: Make a crease about 1cm in from the left hand side of the bags (it makes it easier to open when they are attached together).

Using a hole punch, place two holes at the top and bottom of the pages attach all three bags together with eyelets.

Step 3: Decorate your pages with some yummy papers, I used the Pink Martini, Pink Squirrel papers. Don’t forget to make extra pages to slide into the open sections.

Step 4: Decorate your front cover and cut some tags to add to the inside pages.

Step 5: Stamp some flowers to match your papers and decide where to place them... DONT stick them down until you have added your photos. I used the  Scribble flowers.

Step 6: Add your photos and any further embellishments that you like, I used the Calendar and Journaling set of stamps here too. I also added tags and ribbon to the extra card pages to make them easier to pull out.

Step 7: Attach your stamped Scribble flowers over parts of your photos to add depth.

Step 8: Stamp and doodle onto the tags you’ve added. I used the back of mine to add journaling onto.

Step 9: Stamp dates next to photos if appropriate.

And that’s how you make a paper bag book.

Enjoy!

Hannah

xxx