Close to My Heart NEW Artbooking Cartridge

If you have a Cricut, you really must feast your eyes on this brand new Close to My Heart cartridge!  It has a great font that will work wonderfully for chalk board style print/cutting, pair it up with some of the ready to cut phrases and you will have so many unique subway type signs and title bars to add just the right touch for your pages.  Many of the cuts are planned sizes for pages but you can resize them however you want for cards and other paper crafts. There are page overlays, and double layouts, and 10 themed mini album pages. There are also really neat photo mats and designs for pages for babies through adults and for EVERY holiday! 

And guess what else? Close to My Heart will be releasing free training videos to help you learn about all the many uses of this value packed cartridge.

This will be available to order as of August 1.  Just like our other two amazing cartridges this is part of a bundle...you get 3 stamp sets and coordinating chipboard elements, which makes this a great value at $99 for the bundle, BUT the BEST way to get it is to host a gathering either in person or on-line that reaches $250 in sales and you can get it HALF off!  Yep that would be just $48.50-that's less than the three stamp sets alone would cost!!  Email me soon about how to host your on-line (all customers orders are shipped direct to their home) or in person gathering!

Here's a sneak peak of the handbook, thanks to some wonderful consultants for sharing these images. 

CTMH Chantilly, Cuttlebug, Heidi Grace & K & Co.

Since it is one of my all time favorites, I'm very pleased that Chantilly has been continued in the Autumn/Winter Close to My Heart catalog. Most everything that I used for this card is CTMH other than the card base (recycled-it was an advertising card for something), "oh happy day" is a Heidi Grace epoxy sticker, Cuttlebug embossing folder and the flower gems are K & Co. From CTMH I used Chantilly paper packet Hollyhock ink, Floret Paper Shapes and Words of Comfort stamp set. 

CTMH Dream Pop, K & Co, Recollections & Studio 18

Just where have I been??  And what in the world was I talking about in my last post?!  Well I have been in beautiful Kentucky spending time with my adorable grandsons (more about all that later).  What I was referring to in my last post was that I was going to be away from my studio for 9 days, but I uploaded a bunch of photos of projects before I left thinking that I could post them while I was gone.  Easier said than done...not because I was busy with the boys but because I couldn't figure out how to upload pics to my blog from my iPad.  Oh well, I'll have lots of days to post now ;o)

There's a story behind this card.  I was diligently cleaning my studio before I left when the urge to "just make something" overcame me.  It was prompted by running into the neat foil Godiva wrappers I had been saving for an idea.  I started to just go ahead and throw them away but thought since I had saved them for oh, maybe a year (lol) I should just stop & play with them on the spot.  

I saved them so I could punch out flowers.  Punching the wrapper alone did not work as well as punching it along with a piece of card-stock so after the first one I just held it in the punch with a scrap behind it.  I do like the way it looks especially considering that really it was just garbage. 

The next thing I wanted to use was this K & Co. Washi tape with the pretty gold screen design.  When I first started stamping I was ALL about gold & metallics, so much so that I think I got sick of it and have hardly used it at all the past 10+ years.  I think it happened to other crafters too because I haven't really seen it getting really popular again until just lately.   I bought it along with some other goodies including the K & Co. flower gem (in the center of the flower but you can hardly see it the photo) with a gift card I received for my birthday.

This is just a little 4 x 4 card and I rarely think this much about anything I make but for whatever reason I just kept changing my mind.  First I added the letters from some Studio 18 stickers ...

then changed my mind to use the glittery Recollections stickers, 

thought I was done but then decided to add some sparkles. 

 I'm happy enough with it but the more I look at it I do like my first version the best because I got a little out of my usual box and had a random accent color in it.  Oh well, I am NOT going to spend anymore time on it--it's done.

CTMH Canvas Journal - Chantilly Paper - Love Doily

Well, I haven't been posting like I should but I have been creating some fun little things sooooo, I will be away from my studio for a week and a half but...I will upload and post pics.  So usually I play w/o posting but now for a spell I'll be posting but not playing.  No playing with my paper crafting toys but I WILL be playing trust me!  More on that later. 

This is the Close to My Heart canvas journal,  I used Chantilly paper with the Chantilly Workshop on the Go stamp set, Whimsy pigment inks, Hemp, and Love Doily stamp set - all Close to My heart.  We made this in one of my classes and it was easier than I (we all) expected. 

50 Something Challenge - CTMH Clair Paper

Since it's my birthday month and I'm 50 (something) I'm posing a challenge:  Make a layout that has 50 (yes 50!) embellishments, they can be brads or buttons or whatever but you have to use over 50.  When I did this page I thought the challenge would be 20 something but I so easily ended up using over 50 buttons I figure it will not be that hard for everyone to use 50 of something!  

You can see I was lazy in that I didn't thread the buttons...it would look nice but I just didn't have the patience/time to do that.  My buttons were from various stashes including old clothing of mine, most are CTMH. The Clair paper was perfect for these photos.  Of course as always I will get around to adding journaling later and at that time it's highly likely that I'll also be adding more embellishment. 

June 2013 CTMH Stamp of the Month "A Flowering Bunch" & Dream Pop Paper

Here I used some Dream Pop scraps.  I actually made this on the sheet that had "Beautiful" pre-done but I decided to add some paint to my almost perfect page and did NOT like how it turned out at all so I just cut and peeled off all the elements of that page and put them on a piece of White Daisy card stock....much better!  The banner ribbon is from a Dear Lizzy collection that my daughter gave me, everything else is CTMH, oh except for the Washi tape, can't remember what that's from, I meant to use our CTMH Washi but I grabbed this w/o thinking.

These shortbread cookies were yummy and they were so easy to make I'm surprised that I haven't discovered this earlier.  I stamped them with the flower from the CTMH June Stamp of the Month "A Flowering Bunch" I was surprised that my husband actually noticed and complimented that they were pretty.