HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve celebration! I cooked a romantic dinner for two last night and this morning Jon and I are continuing our New Year’s tradition at the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. We don’t have tickets yet, but if we head over to the stadium with some money I’m sure we’ll find a seat! I wanted to start by answering a question that was asked yesterday: Q: “Does Taylored Expressions manufacture the 6×6 stands?” A: Yes, Taylored Expressions has contracted with our own craftsman to ensure the highest quality on our Frame Your Imagination vertical stands. In doing so we have been able to bring both high quality and unmatched value to our customers with this product. The stand will retail for $12.99 and include a pair of binder rings to hang your creations. Now let’s get down to business! Today is the second day of sneak peeks from the new Stamp a Sweet Impression images available for purchase tonight at midnight EST (that’s 9pm for those of us on the West Coast!) at the Taylored Expressions store! The Baker’s Dozen Design Team and I are showing you sneak peeks using the Valentine stamp set: Love is Sweet, and the Valentine Key Ingredients. I decided to use last week’s Cupcake Sketch Challenge for this card. I love Cuppie licking his lips… that would totally be me if I were surrounded by chocolates! I used cardstock, patterned paper, and a pink heart brad from the Key Ingredients. I also added Chocolate Dimensional Pearls to some of the chocolates surrounding cuppie. The pearls really make the chocolates look edible! I was at Michael’s the other day as they were putting out the Valentine goodies. I found a cute candy mold in the shape of lips and decided to finally try my hand at pouring some candy. I melted the Wilton candies, added a little food coloring, and poured it into the molds. They were super easy to make and I love how they turned out! The candies are nestled in cellophane inside the Heart Handle Bag. This bag (and lots of other favor boxes) are available at Taylored Expressions in lots of different colors. I think this cuppie with the lips on his face is my favorite image in the new release… the look on his face is priceless! I colored the image with Copic markers, mounted it onto a Spellbinders scalloped square, and added red brads. I stamped a piece of white tissue paper with hearts from the Love is Sweet set. In addition to introducing new stamps and cool calendar products, I have something else I want to show you today! I’ve scoured the marketplace for a cardstock that will fulfill every stamper’s needs. We need something sturdy and smooth with the ability to accept ink from bold images and blend well with the Copic markers everyone loves. Right? Well, I have good news….I found it! It’s a smooth 100 lb. cardstock (perfect for one layer cards), it accepts ink beautifully, and blends perfectly with Copic markers. But don’t take my word for it… I took pictures to show you. I used Real Red ink with one of my bold Stampin’ Up images. Perfect coverage with no feathering! The Choice Cardstock comes in two colors, Buttercream and Snow White. Taylored Expressions will be debuting the Choice Cardstock at 25 sheets for $4.50. That’s all the excitement from me today!

Don’t miss the rest of the Love is Sweet sneak peeks from the Baker’s Dozen Design Team: Jami Sibley, Jen del Muro, Denise Marzec, Laurie Schmidlin, Carol Halvorson, Monika Davis, Charmaine Ikach, Sharon Harnist, Ana Wohlfahrt, Donna Baker, Terri Dodd, Stephanie Hargis

Thanks for stopping by on the second day of sneak peeks! I hope you’ll come back and join us for the release party tonight at Midnight EST! All of the products, prices, and announcements will be posted right here on the blog. See you soon!