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!

Boutique Cardmaking

I held a class Friday making a couple of cards using the Boutique Cardmaking stamp set and papers. In my post featuring those cards I promised that I would have more cards to show you using that stamp set. My ladies got the first look and I think they really liked all the ideas I presented them. To think that one stamp set can be used in so many variations is really nice and makes you feel that you are truly stretching your dollars. Here are the other cards I made using this stamp.

On these cards you will find how I have used this stamp set with the Boutique papers, some Boutique PML cards, complements from this collection and lots of new embellishments that can be found within the pages of this new Idea Book.

I hope that you have found some inspiration here today and wish to use this stamp set in your future projects. You can order this new stamp, papers and all the other new items shown on these cards online here.

It's Finally Here!

September is finally here! I'm looking forward to cooler temperatures, pumpkin flavored treats and most of all sharing the highly anticipated Holiday Expressions 2018 Idea Book! You can view the book online here and will also be able to add the Idea Book to your order online. This new book is filled with everything you will need for your Holiday crafting and beyond. It will last you through the end of December so no need to panic about getting everything you want on your wish list.

September or should I say 'Stamp'tember is a time to celebrate our love of stamping. It is National Stamping Month and Close To My Heart has put together an amazing collection of paper goodness. The Memories in the Making special has everything you need to create a 12 month scrapbooking calendar. This is great to add you family photo's to all year long and even makes a fantastic Christmas gift! I will have some videos soon showing how easily these Cut Above pages go together. If your not interested in making a calendar these pages work very well together as single or double page layouts. I will also have more artwork to show you using them for that purpose. You can get more details and all the bundle options on my website!

As always September offers a Stamp of the Month at a discounted price. Tasty Treats is an adorable stamp featuring some cute sentiments and images perfect for Halloween, Fall, Christmas, or just celebrating everyday friendship! I can't wait to show you what I created using this stamp set. Here are some images from the Idea Book to get your creativity juices flowing. Stay tuned for more on this adorable stamp set.

There are still a few more specials available this month, please visit my website to order any of those collections. I will be revealing much more from this book and all of the artwork from my Open House soon. Please come back soon for inspiration and happiness!

Holiday Expressions 2018 Unboxing

This year for my Open House I decided to do a grand unboxing. Rather that lay all the new products and my artwork out on display, I walked through the Idea Book and revealed new merchandise in order. My customers felt like it was Christmas morning early!

Here are all the boxed stacked up and ready to be opened!

The aftermath of boxes as product and artwork have been removed!

I will reveal all of these awesome new products and my artwork throughout the coming weeks. You will be able to view the Idea Book for yourself online starting September 1st. You can look forward to all the new products, pages of inspiration, a new stamp of the month and several monthly specials including a special bundle especially for National Stamping Month! Come back soon and often!

Diamonds are a Scrapbooks Best Friend!

Creating a background to your scrapbook pages can be as easy as a repeating shape! Close To My Heart featured a gorgeous single page layout on their Instagram at the beginning of August. {You should follow them, there is always new inspiration!} It was simply a diamond shape that was repeated across the entire background of the base page. They repeated a few papers from various paper collections in our current Idea Book. Feeling inspired I gave it a try with some new papers that you will see in the new Idea Book launching on September 1st.

I distressed all the edges before lining them in the center of my layout. I them worked towards the outside being sure to mix the colors and patterns in an appealing manner.

I finished my layout with a photo mat, some chipboard title and hearts, shimmer thread and finally some sparkly bling gems. This paper collection is called Boutique and is such a subtle, beautiful blend of greys, blues, pink and yellow. You are going to see many projects using this collection come September! Stay tuned!

Grateful for... Everyday Goodness (two cards, one sketch)

Today I am playing along with Freshly Made Sketches. I love to see the sketches and what the talented artists will create. I finally had some time to play along. I was able to create two cards, because I just had to see if my ideas would turn out like I visioned.

This first card uses some Documented papers and a section of one of the Picture My Life cards in the collection. If you look closely you will see a new watercolor impressions stamp in the background, a new stitching stamp, and a little zip strip from a new paper collection releasing in September.

I also had to create a fall themed card, because I liked one of the design team member, Amy O'Neill's card so much. (Please visit the FMS blog to see all the designers cards!) These fall papers and chipboard leaf complement come from a new collection in the Holiday Expressions Idea Book available in just 1 week! Again I used that watercolor impressions stamp to add some texture in the background and just a bit of thread. On the inside of the card is a little, tiny "you".

I hope you will check out the Freshly Made Sketches blog and be sure to come back here soon. I will have more updates on that new book and have lots of projects to share using the new products!