Hello October!

The newest Holiday Expressions 2018 Idea Book has been live for a full month already! I honestly can't even tell you where the month of September has gone. Here we are now in October already and this month has some amazing deals to launch your Holiday crafting!

First, there is an amazing card kit featuring the Oh What Fun collection and the Oh so trendy shaker windows!

Shake things up this holiday season with the Holiday Sparkle Cut Above^® card kit! This kit contains materials for creating 12 festive shaker cards, including printed card bases, die-cut pieces, stickers, sparkly sequins, and simple assembly instructions. Get a 20% discount when you get the Holiday Sparkle Bundle, which pairs the card kit with the My Acrylix^® Love with All the Trimmings stamp set, specially designed to further customize the insides of your cards.

I will have these shaker cards at my upcoming World Cardmaking Day Celebration for customers to create. They will get the chance to see how easily these cards come together for an impressive finish. I will have another card featuring the exclusive stamp set available with this kit to make as well as some fall themed cards. More on this event later and the kit details!

Important Things

The important things bundle started September 15th and will run until December 31st. Highlight the unique things that are important to you with The Important Things Everyday Life™ workshop. This workshop shows you how to create eight 6″ × 8″ layouts plus a title page and a closing page for an Everyday Life™ album. The generic theme of this album featuring the bright colors and patterns in the Perfectly Imperfect Picture My Life™ cards make this a versatile workshop to create for yourself, give as a gift, or even do both! Purchasing details can be found on my website.

Have you seen the Advent Calendar in the Holiday Expressions Idea Book? Would you like to make one for yourself? You can take advantage of the exclusive Advent Calendar bundle and workshop to create a lovely handmade décor piece that’s perfect for counting down the days until Christmas! This workshop uses the advent calendar 3-D item on new Cricut^® Season of Joy digital collection together with the 'Tis the Season paper collection. Close To My Heart has made it easy to cut all the shapes needed with Cricut Design Space™ project files created just for this project. All the prep work for cutting is done for you!Purchasing details can be found online!

As always, there is a fabulous stamp of the month. Thanks & Giving will be the perfect stamp set for creating cards for the season or recording your Thanksgiving memories!

Stay tuned all month long for more ideas and inspiration!

For You Dad!

It's almost Father's day! Time to treat Dad on his special day, whether he's a classic or more contemporary. My cards reflect the different personalities of the important men in my life.

I am also playing along with the Man Oh Man challenge on the Heart 2 Heart Blog. Hopefully these cards give you a couple different ideas!

This first card was inspired by the Make It from Your Heart Blog and the Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge. I used the Jackson papers and some canvas sticker letters I had on hand.

The front of the card is fairly simple and straight forward.

However, when you open it your greeted with a pop-up classic car! {vroom~vroom!}

To achieve the layers of the car you will want to cut it out on your Cricut 2-3 times in different colors. Then decide what colors you want to show where and do a little further cutting and piece it all together. I used a brad for the door handle and some bigger brass brads for the center of the wheels.

While on my Cricut Design Space I saw this free Dad's day card. It was very clean and modern, I couldn't resist trying it. The Cricut cuts everything out on the base card. I simply filled in the tie with some older LaterSk8r papers and backed the interior with some black cardstock. (these cuts are also included in the free download)

My final card is also found on the Artfully Sent cartridge. Just like the previous card, all the cuts are made on the base card. I used some more Jackson papers behind the deer and backed the inside with a chocolate brown. Just a few more strips of Jackson papers and some metal brass baubles and this card is done.

Hopefully you've been inspired to create something cool for that special guy in your life! Thanks for stopping by!