Faux Quilting

I knew I wanted the Stitched Quilt Thin Cut Shapes the moment I saw them in the new book. Evidently, so did everyone else as they sold out and may not be available until the end of March! However, my ladies will get the chance to still play with these dies and make a few cute cards that are quilted with love!

Here is a close-up of the dies and a couple of cards I made. You can see that there are a few shapes that you get on one magnetic sheet. The possiblities are vast, not only for cardmaking, but for your scrapbook pages too! I will be back soon to show a layout I created using the die cuts.

Please check back on my website late March for the availability of these dies. You will want these in your stash!

Feels Like Home Cardmaking

Hello! Have you seen the Feels Like Home collection in the newest Idea Book? It is really a gorgeous, versatile paper collection with soft colors and a black and white base. Here is a collection of cards that I made with this paper, some of the cut-apart pieces, compliments and the super cool watercolor flowers.

You will see that I also chose to use several sentiments from the January Stamp of the Month which unfortunately is no longer available. You can find many other sentiments and quotes throughout the idea book though!

Shop these products online!

These water color dies can be colored with the watercolor palette and brush or you can simply use the water brushes with any of our ink pad colors by simply swiping the lid and applying color to the die cut.

This week only you can find a great deal going on for you organized crafters!The Workspace Wonder systems are 35% off. See all the bundles available online!

Silly Toontown Fun

Every Summer I take the time to get caught up on my own scrapbook. I started a few pages already from my daughter's Disneyland celebration, but I realized I missed a couple pics. These were such fun pictures we took in Toontown that they needed to be included in the album! Plus, I already had some Confetti Wishes paper still out from the cake card I posted yesterday.

Not only did I use up most of the Confetti Wishes paper, but I used all the MyStickease left on the sheet. It's a great feeling to use up all those materials and get the pages filled in my album!

Birthday Balloons Typed Note

Another Typed Note card for you today. This awesome Stamp of the Month will be available at a discounted price in just 5 days!! I used the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches this week and cut some balloons on the Cricut to add to the Birthday theme.

So many good things are coming April 1st! Visit back here soon to see all the specials and new products.

February Crate Card Club

This past weekend I held my Crate Card Club. As always the participants are free to make any themed card {or special project} as they wish. The only thing I ask is that they use mostly Close To My Heart products on their creation, especially the stamps! There is always a great variety and seeing how others create is so much fun. We all inspire each other with our techniques and choice of papers, colors or stamp sets. Take a look at our art this month!

Here are all the projects displayed on a shelf just above our work table. We had a few that were Valentine inspired, but we also had, Birthday, Thank You and an everyday sentiment too.

As you can see they are all beautiful cards and even a darling, humorous candy wrapped "You're the Bomb" treat.....which has me thinking of dropping the "card" word in the name of my club. What do you think about just "Crate Club"? These ladies are so crafty and talented I'm sure they would surprise me with their creations each month!

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!!}

Make a Card Today!

Hey Bloggers! Today is World Card Making Day! There are several blogs out there today celebrating too, inspiration is everywhere! I did a little research yesterday to figure out which cards are the most popular greeting cards. Birthday cards were number one, followed by Christmas. None of the sites I researched really gave the third most popular. Mostly they indicated that major Holidays such as Halloween, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day were all close runner up's.

So to celebrate today I created all brand new cards for Birthday, Christmas and a general everyday greeting card that I felt showcased a very hot trend in card making this year!

My first card is a Birthday card. Birthday's can't be sweeter than some colorful ice cream. Here I used the Fanfare stamp set and a fun shape cut on the Artiste cartridge.

For this Christmas card I steered away from the traditional colors and pulled in some beautiful blue papers from the Avonlea papers. I used the Perfect-Fit Holidays stamp set and added some bling to my snowflakes.

Finally, my everyday greeting card. Who doesn't love the surprise of happy mail!! I loved the trend of rainbow colors in artwork this year and those who know me best saw it in many of my projects! and of course I had to throw in a little bicycle {heart them}!!

I hope you get some time to make a card or two today. Better yet, send it to someone you love and let them know you care! Happy Day Everybody!

Rainbow Butterfly Art

I have been seeing lots of art with butterflies lately. There has also been a growing trend of rainbows. As a gift to my daughter, I wanted to create a piece of artwork for her bedroom that would reflect her lively and colorful personality! This is what I came up with~

All of the butterflies were cut using the CTMH Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge. This project was easy to create and allows you to use up those scraps of cardstock. I found my frame at Walmart which had some depth {similar to a shadow box} allowing the butterfly wings to "flutter"!

Here is Birthday girl with her new colorful artwork! She was super excited about it and cleared some wall space in her room right away to hang it!

Lucky 13!

This week on Heart 2 Heart challenges the theme is "Lucky to have You". That was also our theme over the weekend as my daughter celebrated her 13th birthday. Rather than looking at the number 13 as an "unlucky" number, we feel very lucky to have our beautiful and talented daughter in our lives!

Being so close to St. Patrick's day, we had lots of fun with the entire theme for her big day!
Take a look~

Here is the silly Birthday girl drinking her Leprechaun Float, which were delicious and very refreshing. These would be perfect on a hot summer day!

I created a gift for her that also matched the theme. I will share that with you soon. In the mean time be sure to check out the art on Heart 2 Heart and play along!

Birthday Party 2011 ~ Invites

As promised, more party pics! Well not actually the party, that happens tomorrow! However, I do have pictures of the invitations that were sent out weeks ago.

I did a full 12x12 sheet of card stock with a pattern stamping. I used one of the flourishes from the Wings Workshop on the Go stamp set. I did lots of rock & rolling to create a 'wave' of colors. Like a rainbow each color blends into the other. Once the entire sheet was covered I cut them into 2x5 inch sections. Lots of new summer colors here too; pear, sky, sunset, cotton candy, lagoon and sunflower.



I then adhered the stamped sections onto black card stock and then on a white card base. I used the Trees & Things stamp to create a banner of lanterns and simply stamped a sentiment. Here they are~


Here are just a few samples so that you can see how each card turns out so unique. Some have more yellow's and oranges, while others are blue and green or pink and purple!

I'm simply "Mad" for this technique! More of our "Mad Tea Party" pics coming soon!!