gingerandgeorge

Love, the Easter Bunny

I'm hoping to have a couple of Easter-themed projects to share later this week, but in the meantime, if you'd like to add some easy seasonal decor to your home, I have two words for you. 

Bunny bunting.

The more properly titled rabbit garlands are in the shop now, and if you order this week, you'll get two sheets of bonus bunnies to go along with the kit. You can also use the rabbits to make Easter cards (as below), or add them to scrapbooking layouts, like this one by my talented and very lovely friend, Julie.

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Finishing touches . . .

For your Mother's Day present. 

Print-at-home tags in the shop now, and don't forget, you can still help yourself to the free printable cards from last week, for your mama, or anyone else you love. 

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Last-minute love notes

In the shop now, ready to download and print at home.

Just in case you're late. 

Just in case you forgot. 

Just in case you've only just found your Valentine. 

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Last Christmas, I gave you some stuff . . .

. . . and I'm very much hoping you gave it away. 

The patterned papers and gift tags are still available and entirely free to download.

As a token of your appreciation, I would like you to pretend that you're now humming the fabulously inconsequential Billie Piper version of that song instead of the Wham original.

Ok?

Thank you. 

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Soctopus invasion

In case you haven't noticed, there are some new residents in the shop. 

Quite a few are already heading for Christmas stockings in various parts of the world which makes me very happy. In case you'd like a little extra proof of their general sturdiness, I offer up the following.

In my experience, little girls like to tip them upside down and pretend their legs are hair, while boys mostly like to throw them. At things, off things, and with as much force as their sticky mitts can muster. Older owners so far have been slightly more restrained, at least in my company. What they do when I'm not there is anyone's guess.

Along with everything else in the shop, you can order soctopuses for Christmas up until the end of this coming Sunday (18th December) if you're in the UK. Last Christmas posting dates for international mail have now passed, but there are still a handful of downloadables you can order, shipping-free to anywhere in the world.

Ho, ho, ho. 

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Palette Pingpong (No.36) :: Desktop wallpapers

 

Anatomy of a Palette Pingpong post

Gabrielle sends me a picture.

I use it to make a colour swatch.

I set about making something fancy from the colour swatch.

I work on it for over an hour.

Photoshop crashes.

I remember that Command+S is my friend.(Command + S saves time, and sanity, and most importantly of all, it saves the stuff you’re working on.)

I start again.

Because I like you and I want to share something pretty with you.

(Press Ctrl+click for Mac / right click for PC to save or set as background)

I hope you like them.

I hope you’ll download them.

I hope when you look at them, they will remind you Command+S is your friend, too. Saving stuff is good.

The end.

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Back to buttons

Afternoon, blogettes. How are you?

I have a very quick download to share with you today, courtesy of PaperCraft Inspirations magazine. 

Button cards - the small backing-cards to which buttons are attached in haberdashery stores - are mostly very dull these days. Once upon a time, though, they were much, much fancier. You can often find pretty vintage versions at flea markets or on sites like eBay and Etsy, and they're perfect for adding to cards, collages, parcels, packages or even your dining table. 

If, however, pesky things like time, budget and good-thrifting opportunities are conspiring against you, there's always the cheat's option:

You can see how I used each of the cards in the magazine (which I think is still on sale for another couple of weeks), and/or help yourself to a printable set of all 7 from the PI website.

At some point, I'm hoping to share a fun bonus project with you here, but things at Casa G+G are a little on the crazy side right now. Good-crazy for the most part, but fancy-pants-blog-ideas-will-have-to-wait crazy all the same. The minute things calm down, I promise you'll be the first to know. 

In the meantime, if you put the cards to good use - or, frankly, any kind of use at all - take a picture and link to it below so I can include a little round-up when I do get to that bonus project post. Deal? 

Deal.

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Palette Pingpong (No.34)

This week's Palette Pingpong comes to you via a picture from Gabrielle, which you can find over at the green gal. At first glance, it's not the most obviously colourful of images, which makes it all the more surprising that I got such a big range of shades from it to begin with. Sometimes, that's the way it goes - subtlety can be an interesting and pretty wonderful thing. In the end, I chose to hone the palette down to something as softly simple and muted as the original image itself.

I'm less sure the project it inspired could be described as subtle or muted, but it is simple and hopefully fun, too.

For my part, the heartfelt thank you is aimed at everyone who's left a comment here this week (I'll post the 1000th commenter giveaway winner tomorrow). They've been kind, funny, definitely splendid and very much appreciated.

Want to pass on a similar sentiment? You can download any of the three card designs (kraft, red/orange, yellow/white or blue/green), print out, fold and trim to size.

It might be the easiest way ever to mind your Ps and Qs. 

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Palette Pingpong (No.30) :: Be Kind

Last Thursday morning, I woke up to an especially sweet comment from a blog reader.

By the middle of the same day, I was sitting on the hard shoulder of the M25 in scorching, shade-free heat with a steaming car engine, a dying phone battery, a pulled muscle in my back and a £50 parking ticket in my pocket. 

On another day, there's every chance we could have added 'throwing an elephant-sized strop', or 'sobbing like an overtired toddler' to that last part, but as it goes, I took this grizzly chain of events more or less in my stride. Yes, you could put it down to brain chemistry, but personally I'm inclined to think it had more to do with starting the day in such a positive way, reading just a handful of kind words from someone I've never even met. And in case you're in any doubt as to how much those kind words buoyed my spirits, this is what I had in my hand when the man from the AA turned up:

(Picked from the motorway embankment, guaranteed to make you look (a) bonkers to the AA man, and (b) inadvertently Morrissey-ish as you wander along the hard shoulder.)

The reason I'm sharing such real-life randomness with you is because it provided the inspiration for today's Palette Pingpong project. You can see the picture Gabrielle chose as her challenge over at the green gables (she also has a fun tutorial and shop discount while you're there), and this is how my palette looks:

The project is a mini-print I made as a reminder that even the smallest and simplest bit of kindness can go a long way. Sometimes, it's a concept that gets overlooked or even scoffed at, but I have the ox-eye daisies and sweet blog readers to prove it really does make a difference.

If you'd like your own version of the print, either to keep or give away to someone kind, you can download one of the four palette-inspired colorways by clicking on the links below. Each of them fits a 5x7inch frame or mount, although I've made them JPEG files, rather than PDFs, so the size can easily be adjusted if you prefer.

red/navy :: green/natural :: pink/blue :: orange/natural

Feel free to be kind and pass these on (for personal use only), but if you do, please link to the post, rather than just the files. 

 

Here's hoping this Thursday involves much kindness and slightly fewer car-related crises. 

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Palette Pingpong (No.26) :: Rabbit Garland

In a triumph of efficiency over sense, I'm managing to combine three things in just one blog post today. Inspired by both Easter and the picture Gabrielle sent me for this week's Palette Pingpong, I have a shop update and a special blog-reader offer for you.

One thing at a time though, yes?

First of all, you can find Gabrielle's very lovely picture over at her blog (she's been posting a lot of pretty pictures there lately). This was the palette it inspired . . .

. . . and this is the Easter-ish printable I've just added to the shop. 

You might recognise them as cousins of last year's Halloween ghostie garland, but this time round, I've made a full kit of printable goodies. As well as two basic rabbits, there are sheets of accessories and clothes, plus 8 printable patterns, either for dressing your bunnies or using as backgrounds. The clothing and accessories come in full coloured/patterned versions, as well as black and white, which you can colour yourself or print out onto sheets of patterned paper.

The garland is really simple to make, but you're obviously not limited to stringing up your rabbits - they'd also work on cards and gift tags, as applique and embroidery patterns, or even printed out onto transfer sheets and ironed onto a t-shirt.

As a special blog-reader bonus, I've also created two printable sheets of fully-dressed (they're the same ones used in the images above). You can't customise them as you can with the rest of the kit, but if you're in a rush to get down to some serious Easter egg eating and don't have time to cut out rabbits and outfits individually, they make the process much quicker. 

If you'd like a set along with the kit, all you need to do is leave me a quick message in Etsy's 'note to seller' field at the time of purchase, and I'll email them along with the PDF.

Don't forget to hop over to Gabrielle's for the Pingpong picture.

And yes, I'm fully ashamed of such feeble punning.

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