I realized that I have never posted my “Garden Tea Party” fabric collection from Studio E Fabrics!  The collection is based on my Antique Victorian Pansy collection, but with a contemporary twist for fabrics.  Those of you digital crafters will recognize quite a few of the fabrics and see some new coordinates that were created to complete the collection.  LINK TO GARDEN TEA PARTY

The first fabric shown is a stripe that can be cut in many different ways to help add great pizzazz to your quilting or fabric projects.  Each length of fabric has 4 repeats of each stripe per yard so it is as economical to use as possible.  The second is a panel fabric that can be used to create place mats, tea cozies, aprons, pillows, curtains or other fun projects.   If you’re a quilter or love to sew home crafts or clothing I hope you’ll really enjoy the blend of contemporary and classic that we tried to accomplish in this collection.  Also, with the digital clip art kits that are available and ink jet printable fabrics, the sky is the limit in what you can create with the combination!

Overall there are 8 fabrics offered in 2 or 3 colorways to make your projects easy to customize to your own style and taste.  If you create something with my fabrics, I would LOVE to see it.  Feel free to leave your information in the comments section and I’ll email you personally.  I’d love to feature any projects that have been made (Cheryl, that’s a hint!!!)  I have another collection that will be releasing at the Spring Quilt Market and will bring that to you as soon as it is released.

Part of why I have been so remiss in posting to my blog this past six months is the incredible volume of design work I have been doing for a wide variety of manufacturers.  Today I get to announce one of those projects.

I had the privilege of designing several lines for Mostly Memories.  Their products smell utterly amazing!  For 3 or 4 months now, every time I enter my studio I am greeted by the sweet smell of chocolate.  That is very, very dangerous for this girl!

We designed a couple of personal care lines featuring intensely scented candles, lotions, and lip balms.  My daughters are anxious for the finished samples to arrive, LOL!  One daughter doesn’t even like chocolate and totally fell in love with this line.  I have linked to their web site, and I believe that they sell retail if you are looking for some special treats for Easter Baskets or Mother’s Day.

The final grouping we worked on were “Sweet Treats” votive candles.  These are a visual as well as fragrance treat.  Each is designed to represent a dessert in a cup.  There’s Cinnamon bun, Blueberry Muffin, Apple Pie, Lemon Bar, Peach Cobbler, Pineapple Supreme, Strawberry Shortcake and Vanilla Cupcake!

Here are the links to their products:

SWEET TREATS CANDLES

MILK CHOCOLATE INDULGENCES

CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY

I hope you’ll swing by their site and look at all the amazing goodies they have available.

I happened to pop by my Fabric company’s website today and my newest collection is up and will be in stores beginning in April 2010.

This is a classic Christmas Red and Green collection with a contemporary twist.

Here’s the link to the site: STUDIO E FABRICS

There is also a Panel Fabric for making pillows, aprons, quilt blocks or other creative goodies with.  The image is not terribly clear as it is 44″ wide and reducing it to 72 dpi does not give you the depth of detail that the original design has.

Additional fabrics include peppermint candy stick stripes, some elegant tone-on-tone patterns, the elegant snowflake pattern as seen in the panel fabric, the plaid that is shown there as well.  I can’t wait to see the printed fabrics!

I could not believe just how long it has been since I posted here.  I have slapped my own hand for being so naughty and will do my best to start picking up the pace on posting.

I promised!  Here’s the newest Birthday Cupcake Clip art graphics from Audrey Jeanne’s Expressions.

LINK TO “WE CELEBRATE YOU KIT IN STORE $5.48″

This art was just created and is perfect for celebrating not only birthdays but other special occasions and achievements since the wording is “We Celebrate You!”  There are lots of different very fun and special cupcakes, three birthday candles, intricate borders including a corner border so you can create any size paper, frame or border that you would like.  If you click on the pictures they will enlarge so that you can see the intricate patterns that form the details of these art kits.

I plan on creating a gift bag, tag and greeting card kit in the next few weeks (fingers crossed!)  So look for a new Abigail Scott kit soon.

I just happened to check Studio E Fabric’s website this morning and noticed that “Deja’ Brew” is up on it.  This coffee collection was so much fun to put together, it combined two of my favorite loves  — COFFEE and the color palette!

If you click on the images they will enlarge so that you can see the detail.  The first fabric is a panel fabric.  It was designed so that you can use the squares to create fun and creative quilts, or use the individual designs for pillows, place mats, kitchen decorative items and wall hangings.  I can’t wait to see what is made with them.  If you make something out of my fabrics, please let me know I’d love to see what you’ve created!

LINK TO DEJA BREW QUILTING FABRICS.  I will be attending the Spring Quilt Market in Pittsburgh, PA next month for the debut of the line.  Anyone attending that show please make sure and stop by the Studio E booth and ask for me, they’ll know how to get a hold of me and I’d love to meet you!.

LINK TO ANTIQUED VICTORIAN PANSIES QUICK PAGES KIT IN STORE, $4.98

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

My friend, Lucy Hampton brought an image that I had placed in my blog to my attention today.  I created it some time ago promising a kit to come shortly, well….  I had forgotten about the kit altogether and it was “lost” on my hard drive!

I had created six, 12 inch premade scrapbook pages and they were just sitting there waiting to be uploaded to the store.  It’s a little scary when your hard drive(s) are so big you can lose your work and not even remember you were working on it.

Ah well!  These are perfect for spring, so the timing is great.  If you scrapbook, you know how much time it can take just to find your pictures and develop your theme.  With quick pages all you have to do is drop your photos in behind the layer, size them and then print out your page.  If you don’t have a printer that can print 12″ pages, you can take them to office supply stores and have them printed onto photo paper very economically.  In fact some of my friends that scrap, feel it’s better quality at a lesser price than it costs to print at home!  You can also reduce them to 8″ size and print them on letter-sized paper to use either in an 8″ album or even place and 8″ page on top of a piece of 12″ store purchased paper and add a little bit more to complete your own unique page.

If you don’t scrapbook, consider the other uses for quickpages.  You can reduce the size, add a photo and some text and create your own announcements, invitations or greeting cards.  You can even send an image like these with your photos to your favorite photo lab via email and print out beautiful Wedding Invitations, Bridal Shower Invitations, Tea Party Invitations or create your own greeting cards.  I especially love receiving photo greeting cards, my refrigerator is covered with them.

Thanks so much for the reminder, Lucy!

LINK TO CARD MAKING/INVITATION KIT IN THE STORE

This brand new kit is perfect to make for an invitation to a Baby Shower for a little boy!  All you have to do is add your invitation information inside the card.  This card can also be made up as a Welcome card for a new baby, a Mother’s day card or an encouragement card for a tired, young mother you might know.  The saying on the front is “Oh so true,” isn’t it?

I’m always on the lookout for quick, easy and different ideas to make card crafting kits for my customers.  This week I was searching my voluminous hard drives for something else and I stumbled on a large line of these designs I created years ago.

It occurred to me that they would make awesome cards and I am excited to start getting them to you!  There will be lots more of them coming soon.

Each card kit comes with a 3 3/4″ x 9 1/8″ card in two version.  With the text as shown and blank for your own text.  These cards fit a standard US Business size #10 envelope, so if you’re in a hurry you can make just the card or you can decorate a pre-made envelope with the included sticker set.  It also comes with a matching envelope you can print and assemble for yourself.  There are also two 3D bookmarks, one with text and one blank.  All of this comes for $5.98, which is just a little more than the price of a single store bought card and you can use them over and over again.

Let me know if there are any occasions or relationships you would be especially interested in and I’ll work on those first.  Now back to that hard drive to see which one I’ll do next, LOL!

Okay, my daughter downloaded all my pictures for me so now I can start sharing some of the great ideas.  By the way, if you click on the pictures they will enlarge for you.

These pictures came from K & Company’s booth.  I could see this done as a centerpiece for everything from a baby or bridal shower to a Valentine’s Day Party etc.  You could make the top an actual box top and use them for gift packaging as well.   Without a pattern, I would simply cut cardboard for the bottom “cake plate” and use chip board or something similar to create the boxes with and then cover them with purchased scrapbook papers or print your own papers and piece them to cover the form.  They’ve used layers and layers of borders, and have used K&C Grand Adhesions dimensional tags, but you could also create your own out of any graphics set you want to use.  Just print multiples of the item and cut out the pieces to layer with foam tape!

I love these whimsical crowns as well.  You could actually make these at a little girl’s birthday party by pre-printing the items that they could use to decorate their own crowns with.  Of course, you must have lots of glitter and jewels to make them truly special!  K & C used lots of pearls, ribbons and layers and layers of their really wonderful dimensional tags.  I believe that all of these paper collections are Brenda Walton’s, but I’m not positive.  I should have kept a notebook for reference on the pictures and well… my memory is MY MEMORY!!!  Which means it’s not very dependable.

The final item for tonight is another Brenda Walton designed paper collection turned into a bird house.  I’m not able to find this collection online yet, it was Raspberry something.  I really MUST take better notes next time, sorry! The collection was absolutely fabulous!!!

This bird house would be very easily created with foam core, cut to size.  Just draw the front panel on graph paper, tape it to your foam core and cut two pieces.  Trace around a round object for your opening and using an exacto knife, carefully cut it out.

Measure the side of your front panel to get the height of the side panels and draw your template for how long you want the birdhouse to be, this was a square but you could make it a rectange as well.  Cut two.  Assemble temporarily with scotch tape on the inside and measure for the roof panels.  Cut two and cut a base one inch larger than the footprint of the birdhouse.

Cover each of the pieces with the papers you would like to use.  If you use Brenda Walton’s papers you could also decorate it with her matching Grand Adhesions Tags.  Assemble with hot glue and decorate to your taste!

I wish I could credit the creators of these wonderful crafts.  Unfortunately no design credit was given.  Each of them did fabulous work.  More tomorrow.

LINK TO KIT 1 IN STORE HERE. Okay Deb D, here they are just for you, and on sale at 20% off to boot !  By the way, I’ve also put all of the Halloween kits on sale for 20% off, so if you were thinking about a last minute fun kit, grab them quickly.

LINK TO KIT 2 IN STORE HERE There are 2 kits, one with 8, 12″ pages and one with 6, 12″ pages that work together to make a super album. All files are 300 dpi png files that you simply drop your pictures behind, size, add text and you’re ready to go!

These are classic, elegant, timeless Christmas albums with a little twist of fun, that will work equally as well with contemporary Christmas pictures that you take this year or heritage photos of wonderful Christmas’ past!

Art Copyright Audrey Jeanne Roberts, 2008. Designed by Abigail Scott DESIGN Studio.

DEVOTIONAL:  Have you ever had everything in your life change in the space of a day?  Sometimes it happens for good, but more often it happen through either a tragedy or just unexpected and difficult challenges.  A phone call in the middle of the night.  A pink slip in your paycheck.  A look at your bank balances and a dawning realization that something seriously has to change in your life if you are to make it through.  I’m convinced that change should have been a four-letter word!

On a September day twenty years ago, I picked up the phone to answer a call and heard the words, “The biopsy came back positive for Melanoma, your husband will need to come in to my office to discuss treatment plans.”  Absolutely everything in my world changed that day, though I wouldn’t fully comprehend just how much until 3 1/4 years later.  All the same, I felt so disoriented and uncertain.  Just the day before I had my life well mapped out and was fairly certain of where I was heading and in 24 hours I was lost and felt very alone.

Then there are those marvelous, mysterious days that bring wonderful changes.  I remember the day I met my husband to be — once again I thought I knew the path I was walking on and the destination I was headed towards, but in the space of just a few weeks everything in my life had changed!  I learned though, that even good change is unsettling and stressful.  Change is always a challenge to find a safe and secure path to walk on.

Sometimes life changes come one upon another leaving you no time to get your bearings.  It helps so much to be prepared in advance with the understanding that changes will come.  The only consistency in life is its inconsistency.  So whenever change comes knocking suddenly at your door you need to remember this scripture and hold tight to it so that it can, in turn, hold you steady in the storm.

SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY:  Ps 37:5-7  Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.   Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.  NIV

PRAYER:  Lord, sometimes it seems like everything about my life changes in the space of a day.  Yesterday I thought I knew where my path was taking me and today I find myself on an entirely different path.  Help me to remember that You know the path You have intended all along for me to travel on.  Help me to commit my way in your hands and walk in the light of your will and your ways.

Help me to sit still and not squirm like a little child asking constantly, “Are we there yet?  Where are we going?  When will we get there?”  Help me to sit still before you, wait patiently and not fret when things don’t seem to be going the way I imagined they should!  AMEN

CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO STORE FOR “HOLLY BERRY CHRISTMAS 3″ Now available for $5.98.  I have been working on this kit this week and just finished drawing and painting the word art for it today.  I wanted to capture a mix of the new, contemporary colors and design elements yet make them work with a classic Christmas color scheme or the other digital clip art that you might already own.

There are very delicate and detailed scroll work accents, hand lettered, hand-painted text, beautifully detailed holly sprigs in various shapes that work together very well to round corners and make frames with.  I’ve created some delightful “ornament” charms that can be printed on cardstock and placed back to back with your trims to make sweet little ornaments to adorn your hand made cards for Christmas.  These ornaments were first produced in gold accented orcelain by a manufacturer a few years ago.

I’ve been working with this kit today on two additional kits, an “Instant Scrapbook” set and a greeting card and envelope set.  It’s very, very easy to work with and almost anything you do with it will look great!

CLICK HERE FOR STORE LINK FOR “HOLLY BERRY CHRISTMAS PAPER PACK 2″ Now available in the store for $3.98.  This is a brand new paper pack goes with the new art kit that I’ve been working on this week.  All of this is part of the “Holly Berry Christmas” series I started releasing last year.  Everything in this kit, while brand new, will coordinate with the other two Holly Berry Christmas kits and their paper pack.

These are very rich, colorful and yet contemporary papers that will work very nicely to create your hand made greeting cards, scrapbooking or other crafting projects.  I am working on a greeting card set with these sets and will have it out soon as well.

CLICK HERE FOR STORE LINK FOR “SINFUL DESSERTS” Nothing tastes quite as sweet as sinful desserts! Using Audrey Jeanne’s “Sweet Desserts” Digital Clip Art Kit (preview on the post below this one) and her “Chocolate Love” sets, this sweet kit has a beautiful variety of recipe gift items. There’s a 1” x 5” x 6.5” gift recipe box to put your 4” x 6” recipe cards in. There are labels in many sizes decorate jars & containers for your home-made “Sinful Dessert” gifts. Tie a recipe card on the jar or use the labels as gift tags, the possibilities are endless and quite inexpensive. .

This is a large kit with 16 single recipe cards, 5 two-sided recipe cards, a gift box, and 5 labels that fit Kerr jars, Rubbermade “Take Alongs” and other packaging options.

All files are 300 dpi jpeg. All templates were designed, created and copyrighted by Abigail Scott DESIGN Studios. Images are copyright Audrey Jeanne Roberts, 2008. Special thanks to Atomic Cupcake. Limited commercial crafting use allowed, see Angel Policy Terms before purchase.

CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO THIS KIT IN THE STORE I think that one of the most special gifts that someone can give is a gift of handmade food.  Especially in this day and age where the fine art of food preparation as an expression of love has taken such a hit from our chaotic, time-crunched lives.  Since I’m not much of a cook myself, my gift of PAINTING food has to be my focus, LOL!

This kit was created strategically to make creating your own recipe cards, gift tags or gift packaging very easy to do.  In addition to the 4 papers that are included in the kit, you can use the Chocolate paper pack, AJROB_184_AA as most papers in that kit will coordinate perfectly.

Abigail Scott DESIGN Studios brand will be creating a recipe card set that uses both the Chocolate Love sets and this one.  Those sets will include a small recipe card gift box that will hold your recipe cards and make your gift complete.  If you have treasured secret family recipes you would like to pass along to a new bride in the family, or have quick and easy dessert recipes that you would like to send along with your gift to make a great impression, these kits will make that task very, very easy for you to do.

CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO THIS KIT IN THE STORE

This kit will be on sale at an introductory price for 20% off until September 4th, 2008.

It took all day to get this pulled together, but I finally got it up in the store.  I normally do not release new art directly for digital clip art, but I intentionally created these kits for this purpose.  So many of you are so patient with me when I show you art that you can’t have yet I wanted to do something special for this season and for my special friends!

There are quite a few pumpkins, pumpkin leaves and vines that  you can put together to make borders, frames or other items with.  In addition there’s an adorable art piece with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, owl and a fun autumn tree.

This kit will also work very well with the Fall/Harvest sets that I released last year (and hope to have up on this site during the next week).  There will be a paper pack to match that will be out shortly.

In addition, later this week or next, there will be a sweet, innocent, non-scary Halloween set coming.  The art for it was painted at the same time this art was and it will coordinate perfectly together.

CLICK HERE FOR PARTY BOXES ‘N FAVORS KIT STORE LINK Abigail Scott DESIGN Studios utilized Audrey Jeanne’s Tropical Clip Art kits to make these fun and useful Crafting Kits.  They will be on sale for 20% off from now through the month of August for your Summer party and special events use.

CLICK HERE FOR CAN & CANDY KIT STORE LINK These three kits made up the June/July Candy Club selection at The Daisie Company, so check your records before purchasing to avoid duplication!  However, now they are broken up into three separate kits so if you are only interested in Altered Paint Can kits, or candy wrappers or gift bags, you can purchase only the kit that you will use.

CLICK HERE FOR GIFT BAG N TAG KIT STORE LINK These kits were created with Weddings in mind.  A tropical theme for Summer weddings is a common one and these kits could create an entire Wedding Decor theme.  The Toblerone box can be turned into a place card by adding the name of the individual attending.  Use the matching clip art kits to create anything else that you might need to make the Wedding truly a unique and special affair!

SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY:Col 3:7-14  You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.  But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.  Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices  and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.  Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.  NIV

COMMENTS:  Each culture has its ways of teaching that often vary.  In the Hebrew culture (see the Proverbs) contrasting good and evil, foolishness and wisdom was how values were taught.  They showed the negative very clearly and revealed the Godly truth equally clearly.  In our culture we decline to state that things are clearly right and wrong, and I believe it leads to a lot of our cultural confusion and powerlessness.

No one will achieve the peaceful, joyful Christian life who does not first learn what God considers wrong (evil) and right (good).  He knows what will work in our lives and what will lead to destruction.  There is nothing He forbids us from doing that will ultimately bring good long-term results in our lives.  He really isn’t a “meanie!”  I encourage you to study His guidelines and choose to remain within them, your life will be soooooooo much better and more peaceful if you do!

I also love the imagery of this section of Colossians,  Paul uses the visual image of clothing.  We put on and take off our clothing and we do the same with our actions.  This implies an act of our will is involved.  We have to choose to change and then in Christ we will have the power to put off anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language.  In the same way we can “put on” compassion, kindness and patience!  But it’s important to remember that we can do nothing apart from Christ.

PRAYER:  Lord, help me to change my wardrobe!  Help me to put off the old nature and take off the old habits that are so destructive to my life.  Help me also to decide each day to “put on” the good character qualities that you desire me to walk in.  Help me to be as excited at this wardrobe change as I might be to shop for a new shirt or dress.

I know that I am powerless to work lasting change in my life, but that through the power of the Holy Spirit living in me I can be conformed to the image of Christ and walk in His character traits and nature.  Please Holy Spirit come work in me to make the changes God and I so desire.  AMEN