New Product Arrivals from EK Success & Kolo!

EK Success Heavy Duty Punches

These great new punches from EK Success offer a new solution for punching through heavy materials like cardstock and even chipboard. Before the only option for punching items that heavy weight was the Crop-A-Dile or Corner Chomper, but now EK Success has given us a more affordale solution. This new punch comes in a standard 1/8" circle punch, a vertical slot punch (pictured below and often used for making ribbon holes) as well as the all-too-important corner rounder.

Kolo Geneva Album/Guest Book

Kolo has released a great new product that is already flying off our shelves after just a week in the stores. The Geneva (available in red, black or ivory) has 30 heavyweight pages, ruled on one side and blank on the other. Its simple design allows for a variety of uses such as a photo journal, recipe book, sketch book or, of course, a classic guest book.



We also have tons of Halloween and Christmas with new arrivals coming in daily. Stop by and check them out! Happy Fall Everyone! -Amanda

Zine Scene

I want to talk for a moment about self publishing. Sure you can blog, tweet, or facebook your ideas to the world on the internet, but there's nothing more satisfying than holding your own published work in your hands. That's why I'm a huge fan of zines. It's hard for me to define a zine, so check out the Wikipedia entry on zines for a better idea.

Anything you're passionate about can be turned into a zine. If you don't fancy yourself a writer, you don't have to use words. You can draw a comic or showcase your art. Seriously--I can't stress this enough--there are no wrong answers when it comes to making a zine.

This last year pretty much all I did was paint my nails, so I wrote a zine about it. As I was in the final stage of finishing up my zine (just in time for the Portland Zine Symposium, which PZ proudly sponsored this year!), I unpacked the store's shipment of Halloween punches from Martha Stewart. The drippy goo punch had my name all over it! It was like Martha sent this punch to the store just for me.

Drippy Goo in full effect on the "helpful art tips" page of my zine. Just because we can tweet our every thought for all the world to hear, doesn't mean we should forget about the printed page. It's like the difference between an e-vite in your inbox and getting a beautiful handmade invitation delivered to your front door. They're both important, but some occasions call for a little extra attention to detail. If you're interested in learning more about making your own zines, pick up this very helpful book, Stolen Sharpie Revolution, and head on over to the PZ to see what you can come up with!

--Mayzie, Portland Paper Zone

Paper Lantern

Hi Everybody!

Well today is my baby girl's first Birthday! And this mommy has a party to get ready for this weekend... I wanted to share with you one of the many crafting projects I've been working on for the party: Paper Lanterns!

I can not believe how easy they were! All you need is paper, scissors a border punch and a little adhesive!

First you'll want to take your paper (any text weight paper will work, I used Stardream) and fold it in half hot dog style.

Next cut on the folded edge about 3 inches into the paper every quarter inch, or so. (Note: If you want to make this go faster you can use the Martha Fringe Scissors!)
Unfold the paper and punch the edges:

Finally glue the two raw edges together to form the lantern:
You can customize these to fit any occasion by using a different border punch along with any color paper.
What party can you make these for?

Christina

Lantern Mobile

Here's a completed mobile using the lanterns created above. Spooky!

Best in the Northwest?

Is Paper Zone one of the Best of the Northwest? I think so! King 5 of Seattle has their annual "Best of the Northwest" poll and Paper Zone has been nominated in their only paper category: invitations. If you love Paper Zone as much as we do, please log on and vote. It's fast and easy!

At least we have this little one's vote (drawing from Portland store). This is the best vote of them all!

-Kim

Girl Fest!

This past weekend we had a booth at Girl Fest at Qwest Field. It was such a fun event put on by Girl Scouts, which celebrated "everything cool about being a girl." The best part about is was the focus on empowering young girls with activites like rock climbing, career resources, tons of hands-on activities, and different opportunities for new things to do in our local community. Over 6,000 people showed up at the event throughout the day from girls to Girl Scout leaders, moms, dads and grandparents.

We had so much fun working at the PZ booth - we made some super cute flower and heart pins that we punched from Stardream paper, adhered to pin backs and had the girls decorate with rhinestone embellishments. The pin make and takes were simple but they were such a hit. We had so many compliments on our puff ball decorations that we placed on out curtain behind our booth, check out how easy they are to make right here.

We got away for just a few minutes to "horse around" (sorry...I couldn't resist!)

The event was covered by Komo News in this video clip and was featured in the Seattle Times here. We can't wait to participate in this event again next year, the free Girl Scout cookies that were given to us at the end of the day were a nice send-off to our fun day. Thank you Girl Scouts! --Lauren

Halloween Candy Wrapper

I need to thank my friend Jenn (thanks, Jenn) for this idea.

I just love making things for Halloween. I think I will be making these, if not for most of the candy I give out, at least for my son's 4th grade class.

I haven't done any Halloween Craft shopping yet this year, but since these are made with relatively small pieces of cardstock, I was able to use some leftover from last year.

My favorite Halloween stamp right now is the Changito Monkey Mummy. I used this with white embossing powder. I also used spider brads on the spiderweb cardstock.

Jenn told me to go to pinkbuckaroodesigns.blogspot.com to get the template, but I was unable to access the site at all. I ended up making my own template. I also think that I would be able to adapt this to fit any candy, but the two candies that I picked worked well with the 3x3 design I came up with.


Materials

7 ½ x 3 inch piece of cardstock
5 x ½ inch piece of cardstock
Adhesive
Stamps, brads, embellishments.

Step 1

Score the 7 ½ x 5 piece of cardstock at ½ inch, 1 inch, 4 inches, and 4 ½ inches. (Note: The side of the cardstock with the ½ inch and 1 inch score lines is the bottom.)

Step 2

Score the 5 x 1 ½ inch piece of cardstock at ½ and 1 inch from each end.

Step 3

Pre-fold cardstock at score lines

Step 4

Decorate wrapper as you wish.

Step 5

Using adhesive, attach the ½ inch strip along the bottom of the 7 ½ inch piece. Do not put adhesive on the 2nd ½ inch squares between the score lines on the strip.
Step 6

Fold in the ends of the strip and attach to the inside of the cardstock to create the bottom of the wrapper. Let adhesive set

Step 7

Place candy in the wrapper and fold down the front, tucking it in at the bottom.

Happy Crafting Everyone

Sandra