Maya Road Company Blog

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Some Tuesday Inspiration for You... Enjoy!

some early fall inspiration

We know that you all are anxiously anticipating the arrival of our new CHA-S products (so are we!) but in the meantime we wanted to share some early Halloween fun with you (especially for you who like to get started on your decorations early!)

Check out this cool townhouse all decked out for the Fall.

This townhouse is one of our 3 houses we released. All the houses are preassembled and ready for you to use! They also each come with a mini album inside for you to record your memories PLUS the pieces to do all the windows and doors too! How cute is that?

Do you also recognize our Scallop Ric Rac that forms the roof? How cool is that?

Related to this, check out this little cute Halloween hanging made from a page of our Scallop Ring Book  plus one of our Girl Chipboard Album pages.

Do you see some of our ribbons and trims used as hair and accents for this sassy little witch?

You will find some designer tips for these 2 projects (and more) on our Creative Corner so be sure to check it out!

Enjoy!

Some more CHA-S show photos!

We wanted to share with you more show photos!

Check out our die cut sheer sheets used as art work (think of it as cheap art :$20 ikea frame +$3 die cut sheer sheet = cheap art!)

 

And check out our MASSIVE wall of products and projects!

We also had a nice sitting area so we could chat with customers and chill to check out the cool tree and rest their feet.

We will share more up close photos of some of the projects soon!

Annoucing the Maya Road Sneak Peek Week Winners!

t isFirst off, we wanted to share a couple of things we were experimenting with today! We decided to try some things out we talked about at CHA-S with our current and new Maya Road releases.

Check out first of all our new sheer owl ribbons. We used some alcohol ink on the backside of the ribbon to get this cool effect.

 

How simple is that?

Then we tried some cool stamping techniques on some of our sheer albums. Just imagine the possibilities for mini albums or for using these as decorative elements on your pages! Here is our sheer scroll album which we stamped with some fleur-de-lis stamps from this set.

Next we tried another one of our stamps from the same set and came up with this cool sheer page.

And finally check out what we did with this stamp set but changed things up by using some color!

Now to the winners! We used a random number generator function in our handy dandy excel spreadsheet to come up with these winners.

Day 1. 

These projects and new chipboard books are adorable... thank you for sharing some samples with us. I can't wait to get some and "play" with them!

Posted by:amaltais | July 07, 2008 at 10:29 AM

Day 2.

LOVE LOVE LOVE these!!!! I'll be watching for them at my LSS!

Posted by:Peggy Johnson | July 08, 2008 at 01:18 PM

Day 3.

I love all of it! The velvet flower blossoms, the pom pom ribbon.I can`t decide what I like the most. The colours and textures and detail are to die for. I can`t wait till this new line is available. By the way in response to your quirey on limiting the calendar album.I hope you don`t as I know I will not be able to get one up here in Canada very easily,(even if their not limited) and I think there will be a lot of dissapointed scrappers if they can`t get one either. Maybe a cut off date for selling them, like after the New Year sometime in January or February would be a compromise.

Posted by:Pamela | July 09, 2008 at 11:13 AM

Day 4.

Wow..Im so dying over the date stamp..I think I will need it all!!!!

Posted by:Jennifer Mosier | July 10, 2008 at 09:27 AM

Day 5.

Ohhhh, I love the chipboards and the jewels! Can't wait to get some myself!

Posted by:Connie Fisher | July 11, 2008 at 11:05 AM

Day 6.

sheer snowflake ribbon! my heart just stopped!

Posted by:CoreyW | July 12, 2008 at 02:04 PM

Day 7.

WOW - everything is so cute!!! Thank you for all the inspirations! Thank you for all those goodies!
I'm really looking forward to collecting them all :)

Posted by:Fryne | July 13, 2008 at 06:04 AM

Day 8.

thanks for the inspiration.

Posted by:June Goh | July 14, 2008 at 07:03 AM

Day 9.

Love the jewel-topped pins!

Posted by:2stampis2b | July 15, 2008 at 08:53 AM

Whew, that is it! Congrats to all the winners; if you all will email us at info{at} mayaroad.com with your information so we can get the packages right out to you. Each package will be an assortment of items from our new CHA-S release!

And we will be posting some fun things so make sure you check back - you never know when we might have another giveaway going on! For more inspiration, stop by our website! We will share more booth photos soon!

tomorrow is the big day!

lyWe wanted to thank everyone who has stopped by the blog and also our booth to check out all the goodies we had.

Remember, tomorrow is the big day of announcing the sneak peek week winners; we wanted to share with you some photographs from the booth in the mean time.

Check out all the goodies in our booth:

Can you see all the eye candy here? Our design team really did an amazing job with showing how our products can open a world of possibilities.

Get cozy with our scroll binder here:

And what about this cute embossed scroll coaster album:

How about our new large windows chipboard tab album?

And finally what about a brillant party cupcake book?

With that, we leave you with sweet dreams and we will announce the winners tomorrow (evening)!

announcing the MR CHA-S catalog

we are off to chicago - if you are going to be at CHA-S please stop by our booth for some make and takes (different ones each day) and lots of eye candy!

for those of you who can't join us, check out all the goodies of our CHA-S Catalog here.

if we find we have enough time and are techo-savvy enough, we will try to post some video of our booth at CHA so you can have  a virtual visit when we get back!

Bonus Day Sneak Peek - Day 9

Ok so we wanted to say that we can't help ourselves. We got some final samples in today that we couldn't resist sharing with you. Please forgive the poor evening photography but here goes!

So our jewel topped pins - how does this cute packet of 50 pins for $3.50 sound? They are really pretty and sparkle in the light!

And we haven't shared any die cut sheer sheets yet!

Pretty cool huh - just think you can use the Maya Mists on this for a super cool effect on the paper underneath!

And finally one more product peek - this was one that we had to take our engineering brains to get right - how about an acrylic calendar stand with chipboard pages??

The stand (this one still has a protective cover on it) is made with a thick 3mm acrylic (so think thicker than our acrylic books) and comes complete with the rings and the chipboard pages to make a calendar - HOW COOL IS THAT?

And there was a couple of questions we wanted to answer about the mists so here is a list which hopefully sums up all the questions.

1. The mists will come in 8 base colors and 3 metallics (gold, copper and silver).

2. The mists come in 2 oz bottles.

3. Our mists are versitile in that you can layer a metallic under a base color to get a cool effect or if you just want a plain base color, you have that option too!

4. Cost - the Maya mists are $7.00 for a base color bottle and $8.00 for the metallics.

Here is a photo of a flower which was inked with distress ink and then then stamped ith our new oval calendar stamp to get the numbers and then the gold metallic mist applied on top.

Ok now onward for more DT inspiration! There was also a question about personal blogs for our DT, we don't have that listed but we will check on that for you after CHA. In the meantime, make sure you always check the DT blog for projects by the different DT members!

What if we start with some classic MR and new MR product? Check out this sweek album using our chipboard butterfly album, some scroll corners chipboard and some new borders chipboard for the body. Another one of our chipboard sheets features full 12" borders that you can alter for a layout easily  - or cut it up and use like it is done here for the body!

Next we how about a peek at one of our new binders - this is the scroll frame shaped binder - isn't it pretty?

Next, what about a new way to use our bungelow house? Is this not crazy innovative?

And here is another take on our butterfly chipboard sheet beauties.

And while we love new stuff, we still love our classics - check out the owl stamp in action here after being stamped onto fabric and embroidered - what a hoot!

And how about a close up and full shot of our clear acrylic square accordion project we featured a couple of days ago?

And what about a crazy innovative way to use our chipboards and stamps? These are plant sticks made by placing some of our new chipboard coasters on popcicle sticks, then the clocks were stamped and heat laminated so that the times to water the plants can be written on there with a dry erase marker!

And what about this using our cupcake chipboards as a pattern for the felt cut on the front of an album then sewing the felt around the cupcake? Totally SWEET!

And with that, we want to say thank you to everyone who has stopped by these last 9 days to check out what we will be offering at CHA-S. All of these beautiful projects along with the products and the MR gang are headed up to Chicago!

Our one final surprise is that we will post a link to the full catalog here tomorrow!

Make sure you post today for one more chance at a prize packet. The winners of the 9 prize packs will be chosen on or around July 23rd and contacted and they will be posted here too! So check back. Continue to read our newsletters and check out our website for more ideas, tips and such.

Thank you for taking the time to spend it with us these last 9 days! We have lots of plans this coming fall which we will share with you once all our plans are in place. We wouldn't be able to do this without you!

Sneak Peek Week - Day 8 - Please Thanks Our Talented DT! And A Surprise too!

So we want to thank everyone who has stopped by our company blog so far. We can say that a lot of the MR family has read all the comments and as promised, we will try to continue to address questions we saw from the day before. There were also some questions emailed to us which we want to share here too!

1. Why was my comment marked as spam; why couldn't I leave a comment on a day's post?

• The "spam" was marked by the program (typepad) we use.  We have gone back and allowed comments to be published that the program thought was spam but was not.
• For the comments, please remember, that each day we stop comments about the time we post the next peek as we mentioned here. So make sure you aren't trying to comment on a prior day's closed post!

2.  Will your products be at my LSS?

• You will need to check with your LSS on this. If there is something of ours you want to see at your LSS, make sure you give them that feedback!

3. Concerning the Maya Mists, the reference to the "proper spraying technique" - this isn't going to be a product that requires a rocket science is it?

• No, there is no need for rocket science; the Maya Mists spray bottles are easy to use. Our Maya Mists will come in a bottle that has a spray pump on top. The label on the bottle says that you should spray from about 6" away from your surface. There is a reason for that. If you spray too close, you will tend to oversaturate your item. When you oversaturate and even though our chipboard is absorbent, if there is no where for the mist to go, it will start to trickle and "puddle" and you end up with the sample photo below - (these were done about 2" away from the chipboard, 3 sprays total)

• Now, if you spray from too far away (say 12") - you end up missing a lot of the target of your item (although after trying this out, the effect is cool) - but if you are looking for good coverage this isn't it (again 3 sprays, 12" away).

 

• Now, if you spray about 6" (again 3 times) this is what you will get.

• And if you want to see what they all look like side by side, check this out.

And some other general tips related to the spraying techniques. Make sure you wipe the nozzle if you notice there is some mist on there b/c that will affect the spray. You won't be able to hold the mist bottle upside down to spray as the inlet for the liquid is at the bottom of the bottle. Also, if you have your item held straight up and down (meaning perpendicular to the ground), the chances of coverage being not good is higher since gravity is working against you and the droplets will start to pool and head downward. Also give the mist a bit of time to absorb and dry between sprays.

Ok, now it is time for our DT inspiration. Before we start, we wanted to recognize our Design Team for all their hard work in getting us all these beautiful samples together. Check them all out here and please make sure you thank them in your comments for all their inspiration.

Here we go! Check out this beautiful album featuring some of our leaves and petals chipboard (they will come on a chipboard sheet)

And what about this gorgeous stitched cupcake using our stamps as the pattern - pretty cool huh?

And what about this beautiful new scallop binder (yes, that is right a cool scallop binder)?

And check out one of our new bulk coasters.

And what about this beautiful house accordion album (hint this one has a matching acrylic album that goes with it!)

And check out our new cherry blossom bird on our sheer calendar album.

And since we have so many fabulous projects, we are going to post more DT inspiration tomorrow and yes 1 more chance to win some new MR goodies!

Remember to post a comment today  for a chance to win a prize packet featuring some of our new MR products!

Sneak Peek Week - Day 7 - Some Inspiration and Surprises!

taiSo there were a couple of posts from day 6 which we will try to answer here - if we missed something you posted, so sorry, there are a lot of comments we are reviewing!

1. When will all this goodness be ready?

• The majority of the chipboard, stamp, rubon items will begin shipping to stores in mid to late August; the remainder will ship in mid to late September. Seeing how it is already mid July, there isn't too long to wait. We do have to post a caveat which is this assumes that the items coming from overseas are not held up in customs!

2.  So Maya Road has rubons?

• The answer is yes! We have had rubons for about 2 years now. Here is a peek at all of the rubons we have released so far. They will soon be joined by 18 more sheets of rubons (9 styles in black or white).

3. Will an industrial strength hole punch work on the acrylic?

• From what we have tried, no. The reason is that the material our albums are made from is not flexible; if you would like to try a flexible album in our line, we would suggest our sheer albums.

4. Will there be a bird acrylic album/ will we make a large acrylic album ?

• Yes! Here is a list of the ones we will have which match (ie the same size) as the chipboard ones that we have in stock already - bird, butterfly, square accordion, scallop accordion, 4" x 6" accordion, square scallop coaster, 2 ring layer book, wings keychain. And the rest are new ones that match some new albums coming out at CHA-S.
• We have made one that matches one of our new ring albums; it is about 7" x 7" so close to the 8" x 8" dimension someone was asking about.

5. When can we purchase all the MR new goodies on the MR site?

• We plan on uploading the items when they arrive and start shipping to the stores. Since the stores fulfill the majority of the consumer orders placed on our site, we want to make sure the stores have the items to ship out to people who order from our site.

6. How do I recreate some of the beautiful albums shown here (ie acrylic, etc)?

• Always check in the Creative Corner on our website. Many of the DT projects are uploaded there with tips, etc.
• We are also planning some online activites (in conjunction with some scrapbooking manufacturers) in the Fall so make sure you are on our newsletter to keep up with that!
• And finally, this is a great story to tell - when we were sending our catalogs to the printer last week, we were speaking with our printer and they were telling us that if there was a way we could add 1 more page to our catalog, we could get a better run price on our catalog print. It was a no brainerbut we decided to print a page with a twist - we would made 2 idea cards out of the page! The problem was could we do it in 18 hours? With the help of some of our talented DT, we ended up with 2 recipe cards that we sent to the printers in the time frame.  So if you would like to recreate this project:

Or this one (do you see a new album here?)

Make sure you check out your LSS to look for these free idea cards!

Ok, now onto the peeks!

Before we get to the main category peeks, check out these cute stamps - this is our dino set.

Here are the dinos in action.

And we wanted to share this with you - this is a new concept for us - remember the butterflies we showed a couple of days ago? Well related to this chipboard sheet are 2 new chipboard mini album sheets! These mini album sheets are 8" x 12" and one of them looks like this.

(Sorry this is a bad picture as this was of our concept sheet- the rest are on their way to the show!)

Anyhow, we are releasing 2 mini albums which come complete with lots of little chipboard elements! You can see here there are some scrolls, butterflies, brackets, etc. The chipboard sheet come also complete with the rings for the albums. And all of this will cost about $4.75 or less in the US!

Here is a sample of what you can do with this chipboard sheet by just adding paper and embellishments.

(Note that the actual sheets come with rings and not the ball chains). Pretty cool huh?

Now to the product peek for the day. Let's start off with a project sample:

So basically everything on this door hanger is Maya Road - except the circle jewel - the banner, the acrylic piece, the chipboards, the stamp and the new Maya Mists!

So a little bit about our concept. Since we make a lot of chipboard and die cut sheers, we wanted to find something that allowed us to easily give our chipboard a base pigment color or shimmer if we wanted to. The Maya Mist line will be 8 base colors and 3 metallics; and with this there are hundreds of combinations you can put together to make the colors you want!

Check out this example.

These 3 crowns were made using on 2 colors - red and gold metallic. If you add the gold metallic under the red, you get the red metallic crown! How cool is that?

And here is another example.

With 2 colors (blue and silver metallic) - you can come up with these 3 looks!

What about this?

This was done with charcoal and gold to get these 3 different looks!

We love the look of the base colors on the chipboard like this:

With the proper spraying technique, the coverage is even on our chipboard and looks amazing!

And finally one cool thing, you can take any of the base colors and spray them on a fabric - perhaps using our die cut sheer sheets as a mask? - and then allow to dry for 24 hours and heat set on high and the Maya Mist is permanent.

Here is a quick little boy shirt we did just to try it out (do you recognize the boy symbol as one of our sheer keychains used as a mask)?

We can't believe it is already day 7, make sure you leave a comment for a chance to win some new MR goodies!

And check back tomorrow (day 8) for total DT INSPIRATION!

Sneak Peek Week - Day 6 - We Can See CLEARLY now

Day 6, we hope you have stuck with us! And we wanted you to know we do read each and every comment. There were a couple of questions in the last day's post we wanted to talk about - someone asked if they rubon used in this photo was new. Actually is it one we have already here - our border scrolls - one of very popular set of rubons!

But related to rubons, yes we have more but we will have to share that another day(perhaps a day 9 peek - LOL)!

And there was a comment from someone that said they liked what they saw day 1-3 better than the other days; hey it's all good. We here have our personal faves too; we make a lot of different things based on a lot of our different interests so that everyone has something they can love!

Back to our peek for today.

So we are onto the clear part of our release. Can you believe that we are going to make clear albums? Yes you heard me right clear albums.  Let me start you off with some inspiration - here is our 3" x 3" square accordion album.

We decided to make our acrylic albums out of a thick 2 mm acrylic (and therefore it is not flexible nor can you take a hole punch to it but hey if you want to do that, you can use one of our sheer albums instead). The albums come complete with the jump rings, binder rings or chains. Each of our albums / books corresponds to a chipboard album with the same name - just think of the possibilities!

And the best of all? The price! This 3" x 3" acrylic album will run less than $5.50 retail in the US! Our entire acrylic line top to bottom will retail from $3.00 to about $12.00! How cool is that?

Let me not stop there with some inspiration. Here is a photo of our beautiful square scallop coaster album.

This little beauty is will retail for less than $6.50 - this is a 4" square acrylic square coaster album with 6 total pages.

We have a total of 11 clear acrylic items coming out - here is a peek at another one of them - our scallop accordion album.

But we aren't done yet. You know what else clearly goes with all these items? Some of our beautiful sheer ribbons! We will have 12 in all. Here is a peek at one of the colored ones.

And what about something cute in black?

And finally, we decided to step out and try something with our sheer ribbon that is totally different - how do you feel about snowflakes in silver?

Seriously, our hearts skipped a beat when we saw these beauties!

And remember you have 24 hours to post here for a chance to win one of our prize packages!

Check out all the details here.