October Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Welcome to our Stamp of the Month Blog Hop!  We will be featuring October's SOTM, which is called Scandinavian Wishes, a festive set of 16 stamps.  If you have come here from JOY'S BLOG, you are on the right path! 

This month we have dozens of Close To My Heart Consultants sharing their creations using this month's SOTM (and other great CTMH products) on their blogs. This is simple to do - just click on the link at the end of the post on each blog to move to the next one! Here we go!

This month I wanted to make a clean and simple card using this set. I grabbed this sketch from Retro Sketches because I loved the funky flap at the top. I tried the flap a few ways before deciding a little swiss dot embossing was right for me. I love the look of Colonial White ink on Kraft, and our clear acrylic material makes it so easy to line up a repeating pattern like I stamped on my card base. 

I paper pieced the little bird, stamping him twice in Olive and twice in Cranberry ink.  I refrained from going all googly eyed on this sweet little bird and gave him a bitty sparkle instead. I added a tiny dot of green glitter glitz to the center of each stamped flower for a bit of holiday sparkle.

Now "Hop" on over to FANCY MELISSA'S BLOG to see her Scandinavian Wishes! Be sure to visit all the Consultants Blogs to soak in the great crafting and SOTM ideas! Remember, this SOTM will fly away at the end of October, so contact your CTMH Consultant (or click here) to see how you can get this stamp set for just $5!

Here are some more projects I have made using this Stamp of the Month...

Heart 2 Heart Favorite Things Guest Designer card

Happy Fall, Y'all!

This morning I'm featured over at Practical Scrappers with this fun fall project!  When I found this chevron print burlap canvas I knew it would be perfect for a pretty scrappy door "wreath", which is ready to start hanging around on my front door now that Fall is really here. I had originally planned to make it more Halloween themed, but then I saw the Tuesday Trigger over at Moxie Fab World and I was immediately inspired to change my whole game plan. We still have a lot of green around in fall up here in the PacNW...plus if you've seen my work before, you know I don't need much encouragement to add glitter and flowers to any project! 

So I hit my stash pretty hard for this project, using up bits and bobs of all kinds of materials to build my flowers. I've got a bit of chocolate felt scallop border that I rolled up into a sweet rose. Layers of Garden Green and Colonial White cardstock were cut with our Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge to build the biggest flowers, topped off with bling from the Rosewood mini medley. I also cut retired Desert Sand linen B&T patterned papers and Creme Brule cardstock for the 3-D rolled flowers, also from Art Philosophy. The leaves and vines are felt. I filled the rolled flowers with glitter glitz and Sparkles, and tucked a little felt acorn detailed with Autumn Terracotta alcohol markers and a Sharpie pen in amongst the flowers and bling. I backed the wreath with a few layers of black tulle...which did not like the hot glue gun so much.

I cut my sentiment on the Cricut as well, using a deep brown glitter paper. The upper letters are layered onto cork from the Midtown shapes.  Most of the materials to build my wreath came from Close To My Heart. I found the burlap canvas at Joann's.  The sequins are from American Crafts filled with brown bitty sparkles. I attached everything using my hot glue gun so it'll be good and sturdy hanging on my sheltered front door. 

I'm linking up to the Paper Issues Halloween Party and the Heart 2 Heart Au Naturale Challenge. 

Now it's time to head off for another week of apple picking, sweater wearing, pumpkin spice everything fun. Happy Fall, Y'all!

Ten Things Doilies

Today the Ten Things team over at Practical Scrappers is exploring all things doily. I stamped one of my newest stamp sets, Classy Doily, in White Daisy Ink onto Whisper Cardstock, then heat embossed it with White Detail embossing powder. This formed the backdrop for my sweet fall card. The layout was loosley based on last week's Freshly Made Sketch, though I goofed and got the banner going the wrong way so I didn't link it up.  CAS-ual Fridays is hosting a Fall Colorsand a Leaf challenge, so I chose Slate, Honey, Sunset, and cocoa from the Babycakes papers (with a bit of my beloved Dakota woodgrain).

I love the bright yellows and oranges of fall against the grey weathered background, tempered by that dainty doily. I trimmed my "doily" in half and did some machine stitching across and all around the card. (Thanks, Elaine for threading my machine!) A few buttons, a wooden heart, and a slate gem from my jar-of-random-leftover-goodness made me happy about this project!

I'm also linking up to the Moxie Fab Metal Wood or Cork Challenge. Hope you'll hop over and check out the doily happiness going on at Practical Scrappers today!

I'm linking this card up to the CutCardstock World Card Making Day contest!

Heart 2 Heart Alphabet Soup

Today is my last turn guest designing over at Heart 2 Heart. I'd be sad, but this week's challenge was so much fun...plus I can still play along next month! This week's challenge is called Alphabet Soup. We were to use at least two different types of letters in our project. I chose the new You Are My Happy Trio special set (still can't believe you get all that for $10!) and my favorite Kraft Keyboard alphabet. I used a lovely and simple sketch from Sketchbook Saturday to start my creation. Then, because I really wanted to keep playing along with the Merry Monday Christmas Card Club, I chose to work with red, dark brown, and gold with shimmer. 

Now I am not normally a gold person. I am a silver person. And I do believe I tend more towards glitter than shimmer. I used up every bit of ink in my Stardust clear gel pen, which is a kind of shimmery golden color to outline and add shimmer to my card, right down to outlining the cardstock strips of the B&T and cardstock striped paper I made for the bottom of the card. I painted my red cardstock card base with red Folk Art metallic acrylic paint to add shimmer, and I also painted the red accents on my tamping with that same paint. The leaves for the "holly" are colored with gold marker and outlined with the gel pen. Even the tiny nail art stars I added for bling are painted with golden bronze glitz gel. I definitely gilded this lily!

I am linking this project up to the Moxie Fab All That Glitters Is Gold Challenge. Cath says that Gold touches everything with JOY, and who couldn't use a little more joy in life?  I hope you'll hop over to Heart 2 Heart and play along for my last challenge. 

Practical Scrappers Ten Things Stickers

This week the team at Practical Scrappers is exploring the many and varied uses of Stickers. I made this board book many moons ago but never shared it on the blog. The book uses just paper and the coordinating stickers, so I knew it would be perfect! It's dedicated to pictures of all the boys when they were just tiny, sweet smelling babies. Sniff!

I edged the Stickers with chocolate ink on a sponge dauber. All the little flower centers are accents either with prisma glitter accents or...well...a bit of bronze shimmer nail polish. I really wanted a finer glitter/shimmer to the accents and my glitter wasn't fine enough. So on the cover, where it wouldn't go near my pics, I just dabbed on a bit of shimmery nail polish and it was perfect! The color ready letter stickers got colored with a marker and topped off with a coat or two of Liquid Glass so they would be shiny and dimensional.

Here's a peek at the inside of this simple and quick little board book. There are a lot of hidden flaps under the Sticker embellishments, where I popped in short notes about each boy and how they were as babies. The boys are getting so big - it was fun to peek back at my tiny babies!

I hope you'll hop over to get a peek at what the rest of the team did with their stickers, too. Thanks for strolling down memory lane with me today!

Heart 2 Heart Favorite Things

This week over at Heart 2 Heart the assignment was to make something using your favorite things. For me that changes pretty rapidly, but right now I'm totally loving this woodgrain Dakota paper that I hoarded. I'm also pretty much always in love with all things Glitter, so the new green Glitter paper and glitter glitz gel are definitely favs. I have been adding stitching around the edges of everything lately (faux or real, which I do my hand). 

I also truly love a good blog challenge, so this week I used this sketch from Freshly Made sketches. Knowing I wanted to keep this card crisp and clean for Freshly Made, I went searching for some CAS inspiration at CASology, where the cue card this week is SILHOUETTE. I knew that next month's SOTM had some great silhouette images in it, which is perfect since I needed to do a SOTM card for my team ladies too. And since that was a holiday set, I knew what colors to use from the Merry Monday Christmas Card Challenge. I'm also linking up to the Paper Issues Put some Twine on It Challenge. Sweet serendipity!

I hope you'll pop over to Heart 2 Heart and share a project made with some of your favorite things!

Babycakes is out there!

Friday my scrapbook club is meeting to focus on my favorite new paper pack, Babycakes! I had the best time putting this kit together for them while hanging out at the Embellish Online crop. I added the Babycakes Canvas Complements, the Midtown Cork Shapes, some Artbooking diecuts and overlays, a generous helping of Bronze Shimmer tape, and a couple sheets of the (retired) Dakota Woodgrain paper. 

I think theis second set of pages is my favorite...we really love the movie "Up", so I can't wait to get some pics of my littles on the page...ok, all right, it's really because of the woodgrain background. We really do love Up though. One of the boys once asked me when we can tie balloons to our house and float to South America!

I'm linking this post up to the Craft It Up Party over at Craftin Desert Divas, where they are celebrating all things baby. Next up is Huntington papers - welcome, Fall! 

Sample image - actual pages will vary.

Practical Scrappers Ten Things White Pen

It's Ten Things Tuesday over at Practical Scrappers, and today we are exploring the wonders of White Pens. I love this one because I like a nice thick line of ink. You can even heat emboss your writing with this pen and embossing powder! Today I used my fav white gel pen to add the white dotted accents to the my Cork shapes, alphabet letters, borders , and flowers. This layout is based on this fab sketch from Sketchabilities. 

I used a lot of white gel pen on this layout. I outlined the small kraft title letters and added dots to the cork title letters. I also dotted the Kraft borders, "stitched" the edges of the small photos, outlined the hexagon overlay in the background, and detailed the flowers with my trusty gel pen. I colored white scribbly borders on the edges of each little blue flower diecut. I even drew in the little banners on the cork heart shape with my gel pen. You can see the twine stitched border really well right here in this shot. I'm linking this project up to the Paper Issues Put Some Twine on It Challenge and the Twinery's X Marks the Spot Challenge. My twine is from the Twinery and it was pretty easy to cross-stitch the border with my Maraschino stripe twine. 

I was inspired by the Color Challenge from Scrapbook Challenges - I knew I had just taken the perfect pics for this color combo. I only added the grey woodgrain B&T background and some Kraft accents. We took these silly sweet pics of the boys at the State Fair. They were in love with this honey bear cutout and each one had to have their picture taken in the honey bear. We spent a long time staring at the bees in the demonstration hive too.  I really loved Ben's picture, so I made him the large photo in the sketch, and I also printed two of his photo so I could fussy cut his face and sign out. I attached his extra face and sign with foam tape so that it really pops! And instead of the doily from the sketch pic I used a couple of rounds of light blue tulle...you know, like the webbing they use for bee keepers! 

Can you see the swiped In The Background chevrons stamped behind the Artbooking hexagon overlay? Gosh I love that stamp!

I built these sweet little bumblebees out of the leftover letter O centers from my stash of cork letters. Each little cork circle got a coat of Honey alcohol marker and some scribbles of black Sharpie. Then I added rows of white gel pen dots. I trimmed two tiny circles out of vellum for the wings of each bee. Then I wrapped my Piercing Tool with black wire to create the curlie-q antennae which I attached to each little bee with Liquid Glass. I used foam tape to nestle the bees in among the Art Philosophy diecut flowers I assembled. I am planning to frame this page for a wall display I've been building, but I think I might have to leave the glass out so I won't squish any little bees!

So, do you have a favorite white pen? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below! 

Don't forget to pop over to Practical Scrappers and check out the other cute white pen projects!

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up in Strings

Happy Monday, Stampin' Friends! Today I'm guest designing over at Heart 2 Heart again, and the theme is so fun...Brown Paper Packages Tied Up in Strings! I knew I wanted to do a holiday card and I found this pretty sketch from Cardabilities that was just perfect for what I had in mind. I had seen this fabulous inspiration photo of a pretty package from Heidi Swapp, so I decided I needed some chevrons in the mix. I stamped my favorite In The Background chevrons in a second generation Whisper ink, then embossed the September SOTM Poster Tidings right over the top with White Detail embossing powder. I love how the chevrons shine through the thick white embossing!

I had also seen the Merry Monday Christmas challenge to use Kraft, Red, and Green with ribbons...so I built a really festive 3-D card using Kraft and Colonial White cardstocks, Burlap ribbon, Red polka dot washi tape, and a lot of stitching details. The stitching accents were done by hand using the basic Stitching ruler and a strand of basic white thread. I got the teensy tiny star accents from eBay - they are actually meant for nail art! I added in the green glitter snowflake to help my washi accented rosette pop on it's fluffy bed of white Seam Binding ribbon.

I hope you've enjoyed my brown paper package with all of it's strings...please hop on over to Heart  2 Heart to check out the other talented designers! 

Practical Scrappers Ten Things Stamps

This week the Ten Things Team over at Practical Scrappers is investigating one of my favorite things...stamps! I made a sweet hippo card using the kissing technique! I based my card on the new sketch from Retro Sketches. I was inspired to make my hippo plum colored by the new color challenge over at Dynamic Duos. We were allowed to choose one color to go along with our plum (and neutrals), so I chose a nice bright spring green. Now about that kissing...

Here you can see the kissing up close and personal...can you see that I also kissed the Chevron background with tiny polka dots? For the hippo I inked him up in Spring Iris ink, then stamped him off onto scrap paper. I rolled the edges of the hippo into more Spring Iris ink to add some lazy shading. Then I kissed him onto an inked polka dot background stamp that was laying face up on my work table next to me. That added the polka dot texture to his plum colored hide. you can do this with any solid stamp paired with any stamp that has texture. You can even do it with more than one color - just be sure you work from light to dark so you won't ruin your ink pads! For the chevron background I lightly inked the image by swiping the pad across the chevrons, then pressed it into the inked polka dot background stamp to pick up the polka dot texture. I topped off my happy hippo with a little glitter paper hat and heart, plus some fabulous wiggly eyes, and now he's ready to party!

I hope you'll hop over to Practical Scrappers and check out the rest of the stampy goodness! 

I'm a Heart 2 Heart Guest Designer!

I was so excited when I learned that I was the Top Chick last month for one of my favorite blogs, Heart 2 Heart. I love their challenges and I try (not always successfully) to play along with every one each month. So you can imaging the squealing in the Stamp Pad when I was asked to be a guest designer for Heart 2 Heart this month! The first project is a color challenge - Sunset, Barn Red, Cashmere, and Gypsy. I knew just which stamp set I would be reaching for, too...Happy Autumn was screaming out, "Pick me! Pick MEEE!".

 So I inked those lovely flowers in all for colors, rolling on the layers of color and popping up layers of petals with lots of foam tape. I used the patterns in Washi Wonder (a special hostess only stamp set) to add texture to my sentiment label and the banner peeking out behind the sentiment. I built the glitter stripes using sanded strips of Cashmere Cardstock over a layer of adhesive. I sprinkled on prisma glitter to fill in the spaces between the distressed cardstock. My center panel is embossed with a big dot cuttlebug folder, then sanded heavily to bring out the dots. I got to machine stitch the distressed panel onto my Huntington paper panel, because my sweet CTMH team was here all day on Saturday rearranging and unpacking everything in my Stamp Pad, so I now have an actual sewing station! Of course, I wouldn't be me if the first thing I sewed wasn't paper. And boy, oh, boy, am I ever grateful to have such amazing and wonderful women on my team!

I used Iwona's Sketchbook Saturday sketch for my card inspiration. I'm also linking up to the Just Us Girls Distressing Challenge. I hope you'll head over to Heart 2 Heart to check out the inspiration projects and play along with this week's color challenge!

2 cute 2 spook!

I'm so excited! Today the new Jamberry catalog is here, and I just ordered up some new Jams for the fall! How cute are these Mummified Jams? I got the Jack-o-lanterns in the Juniors Sheet size, too. I won't be able to get 2 manis and 2 pedis out of a Juniors sheet, but it'll be enough to get a couple really cute manis for sure! You can check out the new Jams (and join my party) out at my Jamberry website. We'll be 2 cute 2 spook together!