new products

The ‘elves’ are crazy busy these days, but allowed me one sneak peek of a brand new product coming soon to the shop. Imagine these vintage reproduction fabrics transformed into an insanely-cute garland pennant for little one’s room. Now imagine that pennant accented with hand-embroidery too. Drooling yet? Yep. Me too. Can’t wait to see what Laurie at Old School Acres has up her sleeve. It’s sure to be fab! When it’s ready, you can find it here.

Crystal Rendon is one of my oldest and dearest friends and the artist behind the popular Vintage-Style Baby Charm Bracelet for Mom available exclusively at The Baby Gardner. Crystal had introduced me to a friend of hers, Julia, who is adopting a little one from China. She shared stories of Julia’s support group of families awaiting adoptions from China. They rally together through the arduous adoption process and prepare for the journey to China that they will all take together. I couldn’t begin to do justice to their story, but Crystal expressed a desire to create a bracelet in honor of Julia and her group. So of course I said, “Absolutely, I’m in!” That was all it took. The girl was on a mission…

We knew we wanted to give the bracelet a vintage flair and pandas seemed the perfect choice. The obvious first question was, “Do vintage panda illustrations even exist?” No clue. We searched high and low and everywhere in between. And sure enough, we found them on vintage birthday cards, vintage baby shower invitations and vintage children’s books.

Once we found the illustrations, Crystal began to create — adding authentic vintage cabachons, glass beads, adorable lampwork pandas and more. The result? It speaks for itself…

I’m not adopting from China, but luckily it’s not a requirement. I fell in love with this all the same. The pink and black color combination is to die for. And the best part? Crystal created the original design for moms and a perfectly-proportioned version for little girls as well! Gracie and I will be sporting these by Christmas for sure!

Here’s an idea! Know someone adopting from China? Give the mom-sized bracelet to that special mom-to-be while she waits for her little one from China. If she’s adopting a baby girl, surprise Mom with the matching daughter bracelet when baby arrives home!

You can see more photos of these fabulous bracelets here.

Get ready for a major revelation… The holidays are almost here! I know! How is that possible? But I had a slew of ‘holiday shopping’ emails in my in-box today — all of them hammering the point home. And as much as I hate to steam-roll over Thanksgiving, I have to admit that now is a great time to start your holiday shopping. Now is when to get first pick of the litter with half the stress.

Shopping early has another benefit too. It gives you the option of selecting personalized gifts that are usually out of contention for the procrastinator-types out there (myself included). But I do love to buy personalized gifts when the stars align and I still have the time to make it happen. There’s just something about making a gift personal that makes it personal. The only thing that tops it in my book is handmade gifts. And what? What’s that? Oh my gosh! You’re right! The Baby Gardner offers both! (Yes, insert shameless shop promotion here.)

So even if you are a notorious procrastinator like I am, here’s your chance to get ahead of the curve this holiday season. We’ve made an easy reference list of all the personalized gift ideas currently available at The Baby Gardner. Just click and go! Easy peas-y!

Personalized Book Plates & Name Labels (Vintage Illustrations)

Baby Boy Elephant Personalized Onesie Set

Baby Girl Elephant Personalized Onesie Set

Monogrammed or Personalized Scalloped Hair Clips

Personalized Hear Me Roar Little Lion Blanket

Personalized Playful Monkey Blanket

Personalized Vintage Red Soft Block Set with Bag

Personalized Nautical Soft Block Set with Bag

Personalized My First Christmas Bib

Monogrammed or Personalized Holiday Toy Bags

Personalized Bluebird Greetings Note Cards

We still have our voting taking place to select a new invitation pattern for the shop. Be sure to cast your vote! In the meantime, I’ve been working on a few other vintage designs. I’m excited to introduce you to our two newest patterns: In the Treetop and By the Seashore.

The nautical little boy on the seashore was a request from my friend, Renee — you know the one who wanted the vintage / nautical / Navy – themed nursery? Luckily, designing a birth announcement for Baby James was a much easier assignment. She’s due 11/11 and is in serious nesting mode. Let’s just say she did a really good job of ‘nudging’ me along to get this done. Hey, if it eases her mind to know it’s finished (even before the baby gets here), then what kind of friend would I be if I procrastinated? (I’d be the exact kind of friend she’s had for the past 20 years — she knows me too well.)

On a personal note, I’m having minor outpatient surgery on my wrist tomorrow. It’s a long story. I won’t bore you with the details (ok, well maybe I will if I get really desperate for posting ideas). I just wanted to mention it in case you guys start wondering if I disappeared. We’ll catch up next week! If you need to place an order over the next few days, no worries. The elves are still working.

Thought you guys might like a sneak peek at two new additions we’ll soon be introducing at The Baby Gardner. Can’t let the ‘elephant’ out of the bag just yet. But when they’re ready, you’ll be able to find them here.

How many classic nursery rhymes can you name? I would bet Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue would come to mind. Check out our new vintage-inspired enamel boards with magnet buttons available at The Baby Gardner:

Little Bo Peep Enamel Board with 4 Magnet Buttons

Little Boy Blue Enamel Board with 4 Magnet Buttons

We’ve captured images from our favorite vintage story books to create these adorable boards with coordinating magnets. Ultrasound photos, footprints, birth announcements, photos of baby, mementos galore — now you have the perfect place to show them off in your vintage nursery. The best part? It’s super easy to change out your mementos whenever the urge strikes!

Do you scrap? If you don’t, you’re one of the few who’ve escaped the lure of racks and racks of gorgeous papers, punches in every shape imaginable, ribbons and brads and bindings galore! Stamps and buttons and scallop-edged scissors! Crop-a-diles and Crickets and chipboard and glitter! AAAHHH! Stop me!

For me, I tend to believe that scrapping was just an inevitable progression from a childhood spent collecting and trading stickers. (Come on, admit it. I know my fellow sticker collectors are out there!) I loved to collect stickers and trade them with my girlfriends. Lisa Frank rocked! But what the heck were we thinking? [Insert soap box here.] My friends and I would spend our entire allowance buying all these stickers, stick them in these cheesy laminated sticker books and then decide to trade. So in our infinite wisdom, we would ‘carefully’ (I use that term loosely) peel each one out as we traded back and forth and back and forth… and probably a little back and forth some more. We all ended up with these pitiful-looking creased and bent stickers that never really stuck very well. But oh how we loved it! That and playing the card game, War (but that’s another story).

So back to scrapping. Believe it or not, I’m really not technically a scrapper. It’s true. Scrappers would probably call me a wanna-be. I dearly love and frequent the scrapbook section of every craft store within a 60-mile radius — but I don’t build scrapbooks. I think it’s a lack of patience on my part. What I DO do (poor grammar) is craft the scrapbook covers themselves. And I LOVE it. You can find my most recent creations at The Baby Gardner.

For me, this is the perfect alternative to scrapping. I can drown myself in all the fun of scrapping without the long-term commitment of building an entire book. The best part is that I can infuse my love for vintage in the covers of these books as well. I love to use authentic vintage cards and findings. It makes each one truly one-of-a-kind. And I cannot express my love for decoupage enough. I should own stock in Mod Podge.

I guess you could say scrappers and I kind of have this unspoken bond. I leave the expertise of building the pages to them and they honor my craft by putting their work in the books I create. Can’t get any cooler than that.

First of all, I just want to thank everyone who participated in the NieNie auctions yesterday (some of which are still going on). Whether it was The Baby Gardner auction or one of the other 300+ auctions throughout the blogosphere, I just have to say, WOW! I am overwhelmed by the response and I know that every member of the Nielson family is touched beyond words. The Baby Bloggie personally had almost 600 visits yesterday. And I’ve heard that other blogs had record numbers as well. Can’t you just FEEL the love? Congrats to Alta, the winner of our auction and to Kristinia, the winner of our giveaway. Your items are on their way!

We’re always trying to bring new stuff and a broader variety of items to the shop. I’ve been really excited about working with one of our new artist contributors, Heather Hales. I’m going to recruit her to do an artist interview with us in the near future (she doesn’t know that yet), but in the meantime I just have to show you one of the incredibly adorable things she’s making exclusively for The Baby Gardner:

This vintage-inspired Playful Monkey Blanket is brand new at The Baby Gardner and a keeper for sure. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hunt for vintage-inspired monkey stuff, but it’s not easy to find. Sock monkey fabrics are everywhere right now but other than that, not so much. So anyway, I’ve been on a mission to get vintage monkey things into the shop. Laurie is working on a really great project (more on that later) while Heather has been working on this irresistible hand-embroidered monkey blanket. Really sweet, right? And the best part? It’s personalized!! Enough said. Grab one up at The Baby Gardner and stay on the lookout for more banana-friendly fellows.