Flowers in a Boot

Hello! I have a sweet card to share with you today! I held an Open House this morning to celebrate the new 2016-17 Annual Inspirations Idea Book. We looked at some fabulous new products and flipped through the pages of inspiration. Then we really had some fun by playing with a few of the new items. My card design was inspired by the Freshly Made Sketches this week, however the flowers and colors were inspired by some Sea Glass iced cupcakes and Ikea napkins! {what?}

Here is one of the cupcakes on a napkin, do you see my inspiration?

Here is the sketch on FMS~

Curious about the new products we got to work with? We had fun trying out some flower cuts from the newest Cricut cartridge Flower Market. They looked adorable in that Sea Glass rain boot also from the Flower Market cartridge. We used some older, almost retired Calypso paper and some new Rustic Home Fundamentals paper. For our sentiment we quickly and easily added a Thin Cuts thanks and simple stamped sentiment from one of the stamps included in the Cricut Flower Market collection.

Remember that you can get the Rustic Home collection for free with the Basically the Best promotion going on this month only. More details can be found in the Current Specials tab at the top.

Thanks for stopping by!

New Annual Inspirations Book

Its that time of year when Close To My Heart introduces you to the brand new Idea Book. This year you will find a fresh new take on products being offered that are beyond basic!

The Annual Inspirations offers fundamental paper collections for all of your crafting needs, beautifully designed stamps, a new Cricut collection filled with hundreds of images, fresh new colors including a color of the year and so much more. Look at the cover of the Idea Book~ {so pretty!}

You can browse through the pages of the new book by clicking on the book cover in the right hand column of this Blog. You can also begin placing orders today online here. Be sure to check out this months promotions and of course the stamp of the month being offered for August.

You can get all the details by clicking on the Current Specials tab at the top.

Be sure to check back here all month long for reveals of new products and project inspiration.

Matters of the Heart

A very good friend and customer of mine recently went through a life changing event. She had a stroke back in January and ended up having a triple bypass heart surgery.

I've been keeping in contact with her as much as possible, allowing her lots of time to recover. When I asked her how she felt a couple weeks after surgery, she mentioned that she really misses our craft classes and is way behind on her scrapbooking. I got to work right away creating a two-page layout for her to record this big event in her life.

 I apologize for the glare on the photo. I hope you'll understand the reason for it is that I decided to use a Picture My Life format on the right side. This way she only needs to pull out the cards to journal and can add any photo's she may have from the hospital or post surgery.

When I arrived to deliver the pages to her I held up a box of cheerios in front of them and joked that I brought a box of cereal to her, because they're heart healthy. Then I revealed the layout and I think she was much more pleased with that then the breakfast in a box! I'm certain she will enjoy the pages more and take time to journal when she fully regains her strength!

Take time to record all the memories of your life, you'll be glad you did!

April's Inspiration (and more calendar pages)

I have been working on the last few pages for a 12x12 calendar using the PML cards that were a part of the Live Your Day promotion in January. Inspiration struck one day while scrolling through my Instagram feed. Close To My Heart posted a page using the gorgeous Charlotte papers in a very visual graphic design. I just loved it and knew I wanted to recreate it for my April page using some Zoe papers. As it was starting to come together I quickly knew which photo to use as my son's Birthday is in April and this picture fit the sentiment on the Zoe complements. Take a look~

Here are all the pages laid out before I added photo's on them. Each month is very differently themed and designed.

 Just a few more pages I'd like to share with you~


The July page uses the new Regatta papers and the Beach Days stamp set. You may have noticed how much I've been using this stamp set, its really a fun set and the stamping is so easy as the images can be cut out on your Cricut!
This is my brother's family that we got to visit last summer in Lake Tahoe. Very fitting with the Regatta papers wouldn't you say?!!

The June page uses a rainbow assortment of the lovely fundamentals papers. It's bright and fun, but mostly I wanted to show you what you can essentially create with leftover strips of paper. Sometimes my 'scraps bag' tends to overflow, so I need to clean those out and use them up!

Here you can see that I used some of the strips showing the matte side and others have the shiny side showing.

If you would like to create your own 12x12 calendar its lots of fun and makes a great gift too! You can order the calendar online here.

Christmas Cards with Fundamentals

How very Merry are these Christmas cards I created using some Fundamental papers! In person they have a fantastic shimmer in an eye catching design. I mixed them with some patterned papers, fresh new stamps and some embellishments from the Fundamental Assortments.

You have until November 30th to take advantage of this month's Simply Fundamental Scrapbooking bundle and receive a pack of memory protectors free!