March Paper Smooches DT Blog Hop

Hi everyone!

It's Pep Rally week and we are here today to share a sampling of the NEW Paper Smooches April release with you! FOUR new stamps and EIGHT new dies will be available to purchase on March 31st at 8:00pm PT. Once our release goes live, you will find our new products HERE.

To add extra fun to our blog hop...we are offering up a prize! The prize - a $25 gift code to choose what you like at the PS online store. Here are the details:

• FOUR winners will be chosen at random from any of the design team blogs and the PS Blog to win the $25 prize. 
• Just leave a comment on any of the design team blogs listed above or the PS blog for your chance to win (you do not need to comment on all blogs to qualify, but it increases your chances). 
• Deadline: You have until midnight PT on Sunday, March 29th to leave a comment. 
• Please check the Paper Smooches blog on Tuesday, March 31st to see if you are one of the FOUR lucky winners. 

Here's the order of the hop:

Ashley Marcu
Emily Leiphart
JJ Bolton
Jocelyn Olson <--You are here
Kalyn Kepner
Kay Miller
Laura Bassen
Laurie Schmidlin
Michele Boyer
Pamela Ho
Teri Anderson

To increase your chance of winning:

• Tell us that you Facebooked about our blog hop (leave another comment) 
• Tell us that you Tweeted about the hop (leave another comment) 
• Tell us that you posted on your blog about our blog hop (leave another comment) 

Here's how I used the Ruffle Pleats die:

The new Ruffle Pleats die is so much fun! The die has score lines, which makes it easier to create box pleats.  Plus, if you want a longer row of pleats, you can use partial die-cutting and create a strip for a layout or packaging.

I took step-out photos of the process below:

1. I die-cut a piece of vellum (you can see the score lines) and folded the lines to create box pleats. I used a shim for die-cutting the vellum to get deeper score lines. 
2. I cut another piece of vellum and a piece of patterned paper. 
3. The vellum were temporarily held with vellum tape and then stitched in an arc to the paper. The arc fans out the pleats, although you could stitch them straight. Also, you don't have to stitch these, but if you don't I would suggest using a strong adhesive if you're going to "ruffle" the pleats.
4. For the patterned paper, I stitched through the center and loosened the pleats. Both types of stitching give a different look. :) 

I also used the Hello Words die. To finish the card, I hand-cut some American Crafts patterned papers for layering. The papers are so old, they look new again. Ha!

Here's a close-up:

Thanks for stopping by! Next up is my sweet and very talented friend Kalyn!

Supplies

Dies: (Ruffle Pleats die; sentiment from Hello Words die) Paper Smooches

Cardstock: (White Linen) Ellen Hutson; (vellum) My Favorite Things

Patterned papers: (Shoreline) American Crafts
Ink: (Taxi, Shine mists) Studio Calico