Artfully Sent Blog Hop

Welcome to our CTMH Artfully Sent Blog hop celebrating the new CTMH Artfully Sent Cricut cartridge! Once again CTMH has outdone themselves, offering up a cartridge with 700 images, 3 coordinating stamp sets (including a fabulous every sentiment you'll ever need set and a super adorable font), plus a full pack of White Daisy Cardstock. There are 25 card themes with styles such as pop-up, scenes, sentiment cut right into the card, sleeves, and pocket cards - cardmaking has never been easier or more fun!

With over 40 fabulously creative consultants participating in this hop, you're sure to get your creative inspiration cup filled to the brim! If you are arriving here from MICHELLE'S BLOG, you're on the right track.  

At convention this summer we got to play with the Artfully Sent pop up card format. The popups images cut into a large piece to apply to the inside of your card base. So I decided to dig into some smaller card pieces. I cut two images, a HAPPY pocket card and a CELEBRATE card sentiment. I originally intended to make just one card, but within a short 30 minutes I had 3 cards! How fast and easy is that?

This was my original card idea. I thought this week's Retro Sketches card sketch would work well with a lot of the pocket card cuts on this cartridge.I stamped the HAPPY pocket card repeatedly with just the word happy from the coordinating sentiment stamp set using Sorbet ink. I trimmed off the Celebrate sentiment and sprayed and sponged both with some Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Mustard. The papers came from the Confetti Wishes line. I altered the stripe a bit by cutting thin strips of teal shimmer trim to cover over the navy lines and bring in more sparkle. I like glitter on a birthday card.

I also cut a small HAPPY banner. I painted the banner with a coat of clear nail polish, then colored it black with a Shin Han marker for a glossy black effect. I backed each letter with more shimmer trim. Finally, I gave the celebrate banner a coat of glitter nailpolish. Why nail polish instead of glitter gel? Because the nailpolish glitter coats dry flat (and more quickly) than gel, which is better in my opinion when covering a large flat space like this. Less curling, and less product used up. It's probably not safe for scrapbook pages, but it works great on home decor or card projects where you want a lot of shine but no bulk.

So I was done and pretty happy...but I had pieces left on my table top. I painted each letter with a bit of the glitter nailpolish I used on the card above. I grabbed a leftover piece of Chalk It Up star paper and used liquid glass to adhere the negative space letters across the bottom. I dabbed a bit of glitter on some random stars for extra sparkle and Done! 

I still had the negative spaces of the HAPPY on my table, though. So I grabbed the candle print from Confetti Wishes and trimmed along the top of the curved sentiment in the print. I created a dotty banner to cover the second row of sentiment and mounted it over purple shimmer trim. The letters got spritzed with the Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Mustard and painted with the glitter nailpolish. Make sure you open a window, lol. I covered the top of the card with Lagoon Heart washi tape and adhered my embellished card front to the base. A few dabs of glitter polish along the tops of the candles finished off my favorite card of the bunch!

Next up on the hop is MICHELLE JONES. Be sure to hop around to see all the awesome creations - this is only the tippy tippy top of what this cartridge can do for your cardmaking!