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

Paper Art Down the Tubes

Happy Monday everyone! I want to share with you some paper art in the most unique form: toilet paper rolls (yes, that's right, TP tubes). I happened upon these wonderful little creations a few months ago and saw them again today so I took that as a sign to share their magnificence with my fellow paper lovers.
These creations are from the hands of French artist Anastassia Elias. You MUST visit this website to see her other scenes. . .simply amazing! I'm not sure what I love the most: the detail, the tiny little images (because everything is cuter when it's tiny) or the brilliance of creating art in something that is typically viewed as garbage. What's in your trash or recycling? Take a look, you might be inspired! --Kim

Celebrate Shoreline!

This past weekend we were up in Shoreline at the annual Celebrate Shoreline parade and fair. What a fun event! We got to join in the festivities by being in the parade and having a booth at the fair. The fair had a great car show, live entertainment, and, of course, the fair food you all know and love. Here's the PZ group in our PZ gear getting ready to head out on the parade route--even the dogs and kids got involved!




We headed down NE 15th handing out candy, buttons, magnets and stickers.




We were followed by a group of pirates that took a liking to our youngest representative.



Back at the booth we were handing out balloons and doing Monkey Puppet make and takes.


By the way, you can come into any of our stores this weekend and make a free Monkey Puppet--they are a really easy project and we had a great response from the kids AND adults!

A fun time was had by all. Thanks Shoreline for putting on such a wonderful event! We will definitely see you again next year!
-Amanda

3 Steps to a Unique Birthday Gift

I am always looking for cute gift ideas for my friends that are both personal and relatively inexpensive. I think that giving a gift that has a little bit of thought and love behind it is always better than spending a ton of money on something that is impersonal and will rarely get used. One of my favorite memories with my friends was a girls’ camping weekend that we took a few years ago. We all piled our camping gear in the car, headed off to Hood Canal on a ferry, played games around the campfire, lounged out on the beach all day and just hung out with our favorite people. I took a few photos from the trip and got them developed at the local drug store down the street. I decided to develop them in black and white for my project.

I bought some small canvases (we have some super cute mini ones at PZ that would work perfect for this project), some Mod Podge, a foam art brush and some black paint:

Step 1 - Paint

I painted the side edges of the canvas black so it would look a little more professional. You can use any color for this to match the project you are creating, or just leave it white.
Step 2 - Adhere
Cut the photo to size and adhere it to the canvas using an ATG gun or any adhesive you have on hand. Next, take a foam brush and brush the Mod Podge all over the photo to create a finished, glossy look. You can put different textures on the photo with varied strokes of the brush or use Matte Mod Podge for a matte finish (I used Glossy Mod Podge for my project).
Step 3 - Embellish!
I wanted my gift to be simple, so I left it as is – but you can embellish these with rhinestones, glitter, or even tie a little ribbon to the top for it to hang from a wall. Tie them up with a pretty ribbon, and your mini photo art is ready to be gifted. This is the perfect time to get started on these for holiday gift giving too, they make perfect stocking stuffers and are so, so cute on the mini easels that we sell. Happy gifting! --Lauren