Oct 04, 2017
October Sneak Peeks Day 3: A Matchy Christmas
Hey there, crafty friends! It’s our last day of sneak peeks before all of the new products are available for purchase at the TE webstore so set your alarm for 9am CST tomorrow! I know we all enjoy creating Christmas cards, but I also love creating gifts, tags, and home decor for the holidays. I figured I can’t be alone in my love for crafting all things handmade at Christmas so as we sat down to brainstorm ideas for our holiday release we came up with the products we have to share with you today!
Before I get started with the sneak peeks, I’ll remind you one more time about our double points offer for this release. For a limited time, earn DOUBLE CRAFTY POINTS on our Merry Mail 1 and Merry Mail 2 stamp sets!
These sets were designed especially for decorating the envelopes for your Christmas cards. My video tomorrow will feature tips and tricks for quickly adding pizzazz to your envelopes so stay tuned for that! If you’re not a Crafty Points member yet, it’s free and easy to join. Just create an account at the TE webstore and you’re automatically enrolled to begin earning crafty points with every purchase.
OK so let’s get started! Remember the Matchbox die that was released earlier this year? Perhaps you already have it in your collection!? I’ve completely fallen in love with matchbox crafts and have enjoyed adding to our collection of Matchy products throughout this year. With our holiday release, you’ll find several new Matchy products designed specifically to work in coordination with the Matchbox. But, in true TE fashion, we’ve designed several other products to work together with our Matchy collection for even more versatility! We’ll start with the collection of Matchy characters sized to fit on the top of a matchbox:
One holiday tradition that I love (and that our girls are just getting old enough to appreciate) is the advent calendar for the month of December. To showcase the Matchy characters, I decided to upgrade our advent calendar and create something new for this year and many years to come:
I also used the new Clearly Planned Candy Cane Numbers stamps and dies to number several of the boxes and the new Matchy Backgrounds – Holiday to create backdrops for several of the matchboxes. I adhered magnets to the back of each box and displayed them on an 11 x 17 cookie sheet. I’ll admit, I was hoping to have the cookie sheet spray painted, but didn’t quite make it there before my project deadline.
Take a look at my video to see a little bit more behind the design process for these products and a little trick as I reveal an interactive element to several of the matchboxes:
If you watched the video, then you saw that several of the matchboxes include an interactive element that allows you to lift the flap and see what’s inside the box without having to slide the box out from the lid. I did this by cutting the new Flap Stacks – Rectangle die into the lid of the box before adhering it together. The smallest Flap Stack is sized to work on the lid of the matchbox as you can see on #11 below. All of the boxes with candy cane numbers on them are cut with the Flap Stack and have window sheet adhered behind the opening.
The Flap Stacks cut on three sides and impress a line on one side (shown in yellow at the top of the packaging file). This creates a flap that you can lift out of whatever you’ve cut it into. As I mentioned, the smallest Flap Stack coordinates with the matchbox and the next size up coordinates exactly with the size of the Matchy characters. This means you can also use the Matchy characters on tags like Kerri shows on this adorable set:
She cut the Flap Stack into Tag Stacklets 2 and built the characters on the outside of the flap. The flaps also work with Tag Stacklets 1 as Jen shows in her cute set:
I feel like an infomercial, but THAT’S NOT ALL! Melody also shares how the larger Flap Stacks create the perfect hiding spot for a gift card:
Because the Flap Stacks add such a fun, interactive element, we also decided to release half-circle Flap Stacks to coordinate with our circular Tag Stacklets 3 set. Kerri put these to good use on this cute set of tags featuring Little Bits:
Since we envisioned these being used on tags for holiday gifts, we also have a new sentiment set to help with adding a special touch to the inside of your flaps. From the North Pole offers options for ‘lift up’ and ‘open here’ along with several cute options for ‘to/from’ and even an adorable checklist to prepare gifts straight from Santa:
Last but not least on the rundown of products designed for creating holiday gifts and tags, we have a super cute die set called Reindeer Pop. Just insert a red Tootsie Pop or an EOS lip balm into the circle opening and you have the perfect stocking stuffer or gift for friends and coworkers!
We can’t leave out home decor from the holidays so we have a new product collection to share with this release. Remember the Jolly Holidays watercolor panels that were shown earlier this week? We took the same adorable illustrations, switched up the sentiments to make them more appropriate for home decor, and increased the size to fit perfectly in an 8 x 10 frame! Meet our new Frame-worthy Christmas panels:
Each set includes one of each of the pictured designs printed on 100 lb. Sugar Cube cardstock. They are pre-trimmed to 8 x 10 and ready to color with alcohol markers or another medium of your choice. Check out Jen’s beautifully colored project! Can’t you picture this adorning your kitchen countertop for the holidays!?
If you’re not on overload from all the goodness I’ve already shared, then take a peek at a few new products we’re adding to the Clearly Planned collection. Check out the fabulous planner layout that Shelly designed with the Jolly Holidays stamp set!
And she also showed how they work great for holiday gift tags:
Plus we have the Candy Cane Alpha to coordinate with the numbers that I showed above on my advent calendar.
Whew…. so there you have it! That’s the entirety of our October Release… all 46 products! Did I get carried away? Ummm… probably! But it was so much fun and I hope you think so too! I have one more chance to win one of our new products before you can buy it! Just leave me a comment and tell me your favorite product from today’s feature (or more than one since y’all have had trouble narrowing it down so far! *wink*).
Today I’m giving away the Flap Stacks – Rectangle die set!
Take a few minutes to hop around and see what the design team has been up to! You will be amazed at the fabulous ways they’ve used these products to inspire you with more advent calendars, gift tags, and home decor!
