Freshly Made Sketches 200th Celebration

Freshly Made Sketches is celebrating their 200th sketch! They are celebrating with a ton of inspiration on their blog. Not only has the Freshly Made Sketches Design Team offered gorgeous art, but so has several design team members from the sponsors of some amazing crafting companies!

The sketch is super clean this week and allows for all sorts of themes and ideas.

I pulled in some fabulous Zoe papers and a few little extras that you might not have seen yet?! I'll tell you all about these 'mystery' products soon! For now enjoy the fun friendship card with lots of patterns and pretty colors!

Please visit the FMS blog for more inspiration. You can see more Zoe products online here.

Thinking of, Wonderful, Fabulous You!

I was having fun with some glitter, shimmer and shine when creating this card for Freshly Made Sketches! I discovered some little banner pieces from Me & My Big Ideas hiding in a drawer that I recently reorganized. {and redecorated, pictures below} I thought they would be fun colors to use on this card with some CTMH glitter papers and some Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Teal. I originally wanted to do a stripe or zig zag pattern on the side papers, but since the banner already had a stripe I went with some Snowhaven Polka Dot paper instead. In person this card has much more shimmer, you'll just have to imagine it!!

In my recent scrap room renovation I decided to dress up a simple plastic organizer I had sitting in the room. With the drawers being see-through, well, you could see right through to the mess inside!! To make it blend in to the room decor I decided to make panels for the front to dress it up and block the view to the craziness contained inside.

{before}

{after}

What I did was cut some Heidi Swapp color shine scrapbook papers to fit just inside the drawer front. Then I sprayed the papers in a rainbow effect from top to bottom. Now it coordinates with other elements in the room and simply looks neater! Here is where it sits in the room at the end of my Ikea Expedit units.

Thank you for stopping by! Be sure to take a look at the other artwork on FMS using this sketch!

My Favorite

Switching gears from Christmas for just a bit! When I originally saw the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week, I was convinced that I would create a Christmas themed card. However, I went in a completely different direction once I sat down in my craft room. Instead my card has some lovely muted tones of greys, purples, greens and teal. Can you guess what papers I used to create the banner pieces? They are actually scraps from the My Crush Bluebird assortment. That's right, they don't have to be used for just the Crush book! They work great on cards, scrapbooks or mini albums!

Rediscover Happy Banners

There is a new free printable download on the Close To My Heart website. These are part of the Rediscover series and will be available all month long. This one is on trend and really fun to play with. Printable banner pieces in an assortment of colors and patterns. Here is what you print out at home.

 

 

Now that you have your banner pieces printed out, here are a few ideas on how to use them~



Use them to dress up a scrapbooking page. This design was inspired by the Make It from Your Heart Volume 1 how-to book.

Make your boring straws more fancy for a party! You can also wrap the banners around a toothpick to decorate some cupcakes or candies!

Use the banner behind some Perfect Fit Frames and "trick-or-treat" sentiment for some festive Halloween cards!

What will you do with your free printable this month? Download it here then create something that makes you happy!

Summer Time Sketch

Today is the first day of our Summer Vacation! The Paper Players challenge this week is to create a project with a Summer theme. I chose to feature a little bike. It's one of the activities I really enjoy doing. I have to get up early in the morning though to beat the sweltering heat! I also used the sketch from Freshly Made Sketches this week. I loved the banners and twine. I thought it would be interesting to create black & white banners to contrast the bright pinks, oranges and yellows.

{All products are Close To My Heart except the patterned background label by Heidi Swapp; colored with Color Shine sprays}

Pop! Shine! Celebrate!

It's almost here!! May is National Scrapbooking Month! Close To My Heart always gives you a reason to celebrate and perhaps get caught up on your scrapbooking! I sure could use a reason and some extra time to catch up on my family scrapbook! These photo's were taken during my daughter's Birthday celebration in early March. Food and shopping with her "BFF's", what better way for a teenager to celebrate! Once you see the new "dreamy" paper collection being offered next month you'll make time to create too!

I am also entering my layout in Heart 2 Heart's Button Up challenge. I decided to use the little tiny buttons to decorate my pennant banner. Look close and you'll also see a larger button in the center of some color-ready ribbon! It's the perfect embellishment to any project!

National Scrapbooking Month promotion is called Dream Pop. It's a delicious assortment of fun, unique background and texture papers as well as glossy resist cardstock papers in exclusive colors! I will post more information about this promotion and give you more "sneak peeks" as it gets closer to May! {I'm such a tease!!}

Believe Banners

Hope you haven't seen enough Holiday banners, because I have two more for you today! They are both "believe" banners made almost entirely from the Cricut AP cartridge. The first one is more a traditional home made banner. It uses the colors of colonial white, barn red, kraft and new england ivy. I joined the pennants together with the lovely striped chocolate grosgrain ribbon. I kept it very simple.

This believe banner is more playful and has lots of fun ribbons and twine. Most of the pieces were cut using the Cricut AP cartridge except the scallop circles that the letters are adhered to. The color combination is similar to the other except lighter shades of red (cranberry)and green (garden green).

I have it hanging here above my Tai Pan Trading snowmen I picked up last year at the after Christmas clearance sale. They are soooo cute!

My daughter said, "Mom, we have too many believe banners in the house." I told her that one of them might become a gift for someone.... I wonder who might like one?!?!

Birthday Banner Cards

Had just a few scraps leftover from my Home Wreath and Mad Hatter layout, so I created some cards. I can always use Birthday cards and the banner trend fits perfectly for them! How cute are these pigs and I have a nephew who loves giraffe's. The last two cards are simple and would be great for an adult, especially the guys! {Happy Birthday little brother}