Paperie for Inspired Living Book Review and Giveaway

No matter what your fiber of choice, you will stockpile inspiration from Karen Bartolomei’s “Paperie for Inspired Living”. First off this book is a beautiful hard covered addition for your library and brilliantly illustrated. Each page holds divine designs from stunning invitations, awesome decorations, gift tags, place holders and so many ideas even for the budget conscious crafter. If you have never created a card this book will force you to make one or several and you will never want to buy a card or invitation again. Karen shows us how to customize and coordinate fabulous paper products for any occasion from the most elegant event to your most casual outdoor picnic. Each chapter contains several projects, from the all important invitation to smaller touches like labels, tags, and keepsakes. How unforgettable your personal stationary be when Karen demonstrates step-by-step how to make a monogrammed, Thank-You cards, Mailing Labels, Business Cards, Letterhead, and Note Cards. The chapter on New Year’s Eve projects includes Invitations, Menus, Resolution Sign-in/Postcards and Drink Signs.

Karen also offers us vital advice for invitation wording and etiquette, and provides tips for throwing unforgettable parties, like choosing a color scheme and ideas for breaking the ice. She has also thoughtfully included several useful templates and source ideas as to where we can purchase your materials for these paper fiber creations. I am sure you all have some of the materials needed for many of her projects in your craft areas. Have this book on hand as the summer fades and fall explodes into radiant colors signifying holiday parties are close at hand and the gifts and cards desired that will bring you back to this book over and over for ideas. Maybe you saw something in the book and stored it in your mind for a special occasion and you know just where to find it and put your own spin on Karen’s idea.

Are you getting married in the near future and need invitation and planning ideas? Well, you do not have to spend a fortune using ideas from Karen’s book. “Paperie for Inspired Living” can be pre-ordered today at Amazon.com or nay of the favorite book stores. The release date is July 7th 2009 so put your order in today.

Karen Bartolomei’s

Here is a lovely video by Karen Bartolomei of Grapevine grapevinepaperie.com, she designs elegant and expensive wedding invitations. This video will offer a little about Karen and above is also the link to her site. Now you can reproduce some of her stunning ideas by using this book.

For this giveaway, in the comment area, tell what event you are planning and why this book would be a money saver for you. This giveaway will begin July 1, 2009 through July 12, 2009. Good luck!

For years now Berroco has been releasing a tiny set of Christmas ornament knitting patterns, often modeled on human-sized clothes, called Minutia. The ones for this year haven’t come out yet, but somehow I missed last year’s so I wanted to share them, as well as a fun little twist they offered.

The general 2025 Minutia patterns include a circular yoke sweater, a two-color stocking and a ribbed earflap hat. They’re super cute and perfect for using little (or should I say minute?) amounts of yarn left over from other projects. Make them in Christmas colors or whatever you have on hand. Even if you don’t have exactly the same yarn weight, you can still make these cute additions to your holiday decor.

But what really caught my eye while I was on the Berocco site was the Team Colors Minutia, which are actually different patterns so I’m not even sure when they were released, but they are definitely worth talking about.

These patterns include a little raglan sweater with stripes and a stocking cap with contrasting pom pom.

They call for sport weight yarn, but again you could use sock or DK if that’s what you have in the right colors. And here the right colors are important because you’re stitching your team colors.

Or anyone else’s team colors.

I immediately thought that this would be an amazing holiday gift for someone who you never know what to get but who also happens to like sports. Or has gone to a university that has colors.

Another option would be to leave off the stripes and add a number in duplicate stitch if you or the person you’re knitting for has a favorite player. Or stitch a letter or a tiny version of the team logo on the front. There are lots of options!

If you make these, I’d love to hear what you did with them!

[Photo: Berroco]

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