Good morning and welcome to the first day of sneak peeks for the March release at Taylored Expressions! I know we haven’t officially turned our calendars to the month of March, but I didn’t think you’d mind starting the peeks a day early, right!? All of our new products will be available for purchase at 8am PST on Thursday, March 3rd! We’ve had some fabulous weather here lately and it’s making me ‘think spring’! Spring is a beautiful time when everything comes to life again (including me!). I enjoy going for walks and riding my bike, just drinking in the fresh air. And the bright colors return not only to the landscape, but to my stamp room too! As I pulled out all of our new spring stamps and colorful papers to create projects for this release I had a big ‘ol smile on my face! Here are some peeks of the fresh spring collection at TE:

First, we have Spring Wreath, a new petite set illustrated by Nancy McKinney for the Whimsical Wishes collection. If you’ve picked up our previous Wreath of Love and Wreath of Luck sets you know just how much fun these sets are, especially when paired with the coordinating Seasonal Wreath die. And this one die is going to get a lot of use as we continue to release seasonal wreaths stamp sets to coordinate! I stamped the wreath and flower border in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored them with Copics. Then I added a little Yellow Bloom Puffie and the sentiment. The card still need something so I thought “Why not do a little piercing around the image panel?” After the piercing it still needed “something” so I decided to try hand-stitching the border with a needle and thread…. crazy me! That’s what sewing machines are for! It took forever to do the stitching, but I love how it turned out!

I’m especially excited to introduce the next stamp set in our popular Banner Day series, It’s a Banner Day – 2! The concept for these images comes from the fabulous Iwona Palamountain and if you missed our first Banner Day 1 set you’ll definitely want to snatch it up too! These banners stamps and coordinating sentiments are so versatile and each comes with a coordinating die to make cutting quick and easy. Today the Baker’s Dozen and I are pairing It’s a Banner Day -2 with previously released spring stamp sets. I pulled out last year’s Favorite Peeps stamp set and the frame from New Beginnings to create the scene. I started by stamping the frame in Colorbox Rouge ink and the birdie on the branch in Memento Tuxedo Black. Then I masked the outside of the frame and the bird/branch and sponged the cloudy pattern in the background. The sentiment and polka dot banner are from the Banner Day 2 stamp set. The patterned paper collection is the new Springtime from Echo Park and I finished it all off with a little ribbon, a few brads, and a purple picket fence!

And now I have one more project to share with you that uses the adorable Spring A la Carte stamp! I stamped the image in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored it with Copic markers. Then I cut it out with the Spellbinders Labels 17 die and airbrushed the background. I also added glitter to jazz it up, but it’s hard to see in the picture. I decided to try out my new 3/8″ ribbon slot border punch along the bottom. I just punched the border and then threaded the ribbon through the holes. To finish it off I added a few glittered brads on the right side of the image and a yellow polka dot Puffie bloom. All of the cardstock, patterned paper, ribbon, and glitter brads are from our new Spring Project Pantry kit that we’re also releasing this month! It includes the following:

• 20 sheets of 6×6 double-sided patterned paper from the We R Memory Hippity Hoppity collection
• 12 sheets of 8.5×11 cardstock
• 5 yards of ribbon (1 yard each of 5 different styles)
• Package of 50 glitter brads
• Package of Kaisercraft Ice Blue rhinestones
• Package of Kaisercraft Hot Pink pearls

Everything you need to make a batch of happy spring cards! The rest of the Baker’s Dozen has lots of fabulous projects to share with you, many of which also use the Spring Project Pantry ingredients so hippity hop along and check ’em out!

• Charmaine Ikach
• Danielle Lounds
• Iwona Palamountain
• Jackie Pedro
• Jami Sibley
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Giron
• Karen Motz
• Melissa Sauls
• Regina Mangum
• Sankari Wegman
• Tori Wild

Psst… one more thing! We’d love to have you join us on Facebook! Our Facebook fans receive special promotional codes, sneak peeks at new stamps, and once we reach 1,500 fans we’ll be giving away our ENTIRE March release to one lucky fan! So head over to our Facebook page and click “like” at the top!