Day 338: Owl Miss You Card

The closer we get to our actual move date, the more torn the boys feel about moving. While they are excited about the new house, and happy/nervous about their new school, they are leaving behind so many wonderful friends and teachers who made Spokane a great place to live. 

This weekend I helped them with a little project, making thank you notes and pen pal packages for their teachers and best friends. I was in charge of the card making, and they were in charge of the heartfelt inner notes plus delivery. I used the new sketch from Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge to get this party started, plus some adorable wooden owls and polka dot skinny washi tape that I found at Hobby Lobby and hoarded saved for the right occasion. All the other papers are from La Vie En Rose.

I added bow ties to the owls using the La Vie En rose Complements, and that layered banner at the top was built from a La Vie kraft arrow that I split in half and layered back together. 

I think this quote paraphrased from Winnie the Pooh says it best. "How lucky we are to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." Thank you to Spokane, and especially to all of lovely, fabulous Spokanites. I know the boys and I will always be happy we had this #spokaneadventure.  

Day 86: Atlantic Hearts Sunshine Card

While I was working on those boards I produced quite a few Cricut cuts for items I just couldn't fit onto the boards. With 700 awesome cuts on each CTMH Cricut cartridge, it was hard to choose what to feature and what to leave off.

I had this cute owl leftover when I finished my Artiste Board. I had cut him too big for my board, and also too large for a standard A2 card, so hes on a 5x7 card. Which, if you know me, you know I rarely make a 5x7 card, but he was just too cute to relegate to the odds and ends bin. I paired him with a sunshine I made by embossing a medallion with the chevron embossing folder. I filled the embossed lines with glitter gel, and added a sweet sentiment from a long retired stamp set. 

Normally I'm a big fan of googly eyes on owls, but I just couldn't get them to look right on this guy. I think maybe I needed bigger ones than I normally keep in my stash. I added these black sparkle gems instead. I stamped his wings with Smoothie ink. His feathers are Canary cardstock, Smoothie stripe washi tape, and some black chevron tape I got from this cute Etsy store, SpiegelMom Scraps. 

I used this week's card sketch from Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge. The challenge is open now, so hop on over and join the party!

August Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Welcome to our CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop!  We will be featuring August's SOTM, which is called What a Hoot, a set of 17 stamps featuring the most adorable owls!  If you have come here from BETH'S BLOG, you are on the right path! The blog hop is a great big circle, so you can start here and work your way all around.  If you get lost along the way, you’ll find the complete list of participating consultants HERE. 

This month we have 67 Close To My Heart Consultants sharing their creations using this month's SOTM and other great CTMH products (with lots of sneak peeks of the new catalog goodies going live tomorrow I'm sure). Hopping 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'm sharing the first two of six pages (yes, MMC gals, these are your pages) done with the new Pathfinding Kit that I'll be sharing over the course of this weekend. I've been playing a lot with paper piecing the owls from this stamp set for cards, and I knew I needed to incorporate these cuties into my pages for sure.

For this little guy I colored his main coat with one of our new ShinHan markers in Turquoise Blue. They color so smoothly and evenly! I pieced his little belly out of the Pathfinding paper, and his eye area is covered with the new Lagoon Hearts washi tape. Ah, washi! Can you ever really have too much washi? I couldn't resist popping on some wiggly eyes...I really think they make his outfit!

For my second little dude I reversed the paper piecing, coloring his eye area and piecing his coat from the Pathfinding paper. The simple shape of this owl is really conducive to easy paper piecing. Plus since our stamps are clear, it's easy to line up the patterned paper to put the cutest bits into the area you are piecing. 

Now "Hop" on over to CARLA'S BLOG to see her work! Be sure to visit all the Consultants at their Blogs to get some great crafting ideas and other fun ideas! Remember, this What a Hoot SOTM is only available until the end of August!  Contact your CTMH Consultant (or click here) to get your stamp set for just $5!

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

Atlantic Hearts Sketch Card with Quick Color Tutorial

Team Card Times Three (I heart variations!)

Atlantic Hearts Sketch 66

I've got another adorable August SOTM owl for you today, Stampin' Friends! This time I'm creating with Sketch 66 for the Atlantic Hearts sketch Challenge. I'm also linking up to the Cute Card Thursday For the Birds Challenge. I wanted to play with my new ShinHan Alcohol Markers, and I knew that adorable pumpkin would be just too much fun to color!

For the card colors I turned to the new Pathfinder papers to be released August 1st. I stamped the blue cardstock background with the floral spray in Saddle Ink. I added that pop of new orange arrow washi tape and adhered it all to a sanded Saddle cardstock base.

The adorable owl is paper pieced again, but this time he got a little friend. I did a bit of a no-no for the pumpkin coloring, in that I used a dye based ink pad (CTMH's Saddle) for the stamping instead of Archival Black or Memento inks. I wanted a softer look to the pumpkin, so I was ok with the markers smudging my stamping a bit. Here's how I did it (and fixed up the smudged dye based ink!):

I went ahead and made ten of these guys because it was so much fun (and I am bound and determined to be ON TIME with my swap cards this month)!

I couldn't resist finishing off my sentiment banner with the new mini stapler coming in August. I mean, honestly, could these teensy staples BE any cuter? I guess I carried on my alcohol marker rebellion by coloring over the Saddle ink here as well. Feel free to flick sequins at me! 

I hope you're feeling inspired to hop over to Atlantic Hearts and check out all the adorable cards made from this simple and clean sketch. Thanks for stopping by...it's been a hoot! 

Monday Motivations Team Card Times Three

My team and I will be doing our second video chat meeting tomorrow and our first video card project! 

I knew I wanted to use the August Stamp of the month, because this owl is the cutest thing! I based my cards on the MUSE challenge...and I say cards because I made three. For the first one I grabbed the new Confetti Wishes papers for a sweet and simple birthday card. I colored his tummy with our new Shin Han alcohol markers. The hat and sentiment I stamped onto B&T and popped those up with foam tape. A bit of glitter and wiggly eyes finished off my embellies. I cannot resist wiggly eyes with these guys!

Then I looked around and saw the scraps from my Jubilee pages waiting to be put away...so I made a second card just the same but with the Jubilee papers. I added stamping to the background cardstock base, and highlighted the "what a" part of the sentiment with my sparkly gelly roll pen.

Finally I wanted a more girly version, so I grabbed the new Blushed papers and made a little pink and yellow owl with no coloring...but extra glitter. I know I made three cards almost the same, but I could have kept on making them all day! It was so much fun to piece this sweet owl and put him together in different ways. Great inspiration card, MUSE! I hope my team likes this at our meeting Monday night as much as I did!

Pair-a-Phrase Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Pair-A Phrase Blog Hop! Over 40 consultants will be posting beautiful artwork featuring the new "Double-D" Pair-A-Phrase stamp set, available FREE with a minimum purchase starting on August 15th! That's TWO D-sized stamps in one package for FREE. Combine that with the SOTM special this month, and for $5 you can get FOUR stamp sets - what an amazing deal! 

If you are coming here from NIKKA'S BLOG, you are on the right track! Leave a comment below - I'll draw a winner next week and send that lovely winning commenter this adorable card!

I made a cute 4 1/4 inch square card inspired by a circle card I saw by a wonderful UK designer named Wendy McKee. I shrunk the card down to a square, and swiped all the circles on my card with black ink on the edges for more definition. Don't you love all the little patterns? This new paper is called Elemental, and it is so versatile!

I stamped a bunch of the images from Pair-A-Phrase in Black ink and heat embossed them with Clear powder for shine. Then I colored them using my watercolor pencils and my blending pen.

I grabbed the fancy bracket for my sentiment from a set called Made With Love, and popped up my Pair-A-Phrase sentiment with 3-D foam tape. I love to stamp my sentiment once full strength, then repeatedly until the ink is gone to give more dimension to a sentiment focal point.

I stitched around my card front with rainbow thread! I used the White floss from the Neutral Floss assortment and ran it through the four colors of ink that matched my paper using a sponge dauber. You just lay the floss onto your scratch paper, press the inked dauber on top and pull the thread through; repeat until you have the intensity you desire. What I like about this is when you separate the thread to stitch (I used 2 strands) you still get some white in there so it looks even more tie dyed! I also added a few stitches across the bodies of my butterflies to ensure they wouldn't be popping off and for more texture.

Final touches include a bit of glitter glitz for my embossed images, and Liquid Glass eyes for my owl so they look kind of googly. I swiped my card front and base with Black ink, then popped my embellished card front up on the card base with foam tape.

Love this amazingly versatile stamp set? So do I! Be sure to ask your consultant or CLICK HERE to get yours today. Don't forget, with minimum purchase you can get all 4 bonus stamp sets this month for just $5!! Now hop on over to PAMELA'S BLOG to see what scrumptious craftiness she's got in store for you!

Thanks for making me wiser!

I'm off today to a team meeting hosted by my fabulus upline, Ginni. She works so hard to make sure our team trainings are not only informational, but downright amazing fun! It also happens to be her birthday, so I am bringing her a little gift. I'm posting this to my blog after the meeting starts so she won't get a sneak peek, lol!

First off, the gift...I painted a simple wood frame with creamy white acrylic paint, then stamped on the flourishes and "LAUGH" with Staz-on ink in brown. The papers are cut from our new Roxy Kit - so girlie!

A piled high pleated ribbon flower was contributed by my downline Cathy - she always knows how to make a cool new flower. We popped a new Bling assortment rhinestone button into the center...I know I am not going to be able to get enough of those! I finished it off with a border of rhinestones and some pretty Pearl Opaques. Hope she likes it!

Now for the bag - I'm hooting with delight over this one. I saw a cute thing on Pinterest that lead me to a blog by Lisa Storms with the cutest theme party ideas! This bag had the perfect sentiment for my team leader, so I stamplifted it lickety split!

All the paper for this bag is still from the Roxie Kit - that's one Leopard print owl! I hand trimmed triangles for his forhead and beak, and popped up the hand printed sentiment, "Thanks for making me wiser!"

Now I'm off to the meeting - Happy Birthday, Ginni!