November SOTM Blog Hop!

Welcome to our CTMH Stamp of the Month Blog Hop! We will be featuring November's SOTM, which is Cherish The Day, a set of 44 stamps! If you have come here from BRAE'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 almost 60 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 made a crafty picture frame for my friend and downline Bao, who just welcomed beautiful baby boy Joseph to her family! I used the October image stamped on tickets cut with my Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge to create the big flower in the lower frame corner. I rolled the image in Sweet Leaf and Vineyard Berry inks, then pulled each ticket over the handle of my piercing tool to make the "petals curve". The paper is retired (Wings), but I have a not-so-secret stash since I just LOVE butterflies! I painted the frame with White acrylic paint, and stamped directly onto the painted surface with my CTMH inks for the swirls and title. Final touches included a few Just Blooms Flutter paper butterflies, Bling collection buttons, and Stardust Glitter Glitz. Now I have something fun and hand-made  to bring when I get to meet Baby Joseph!

Now "Hop" on over to DAWN'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 SOTM is only available until the end of November! Contact your CTMH Consultant (or click here) to see how you can get this stamp set for just $5!

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

Upcoming Holiday Gift Calendar Workshop
4th of July Scrapbook Wall Hanging
Set of 12 SOTM Cards

Stamp A Stack Preview!

One of my most popular workshops each year is Stamp A Stack, which this year will be a part of the Black Friday Holiday Hoopla! There are 4 designs this year, and you can make as many of each design as you need to fill your Christmas card list with beautiful handmade cards...for just $1 per card!

Stamp a little, or a lot - the choice is yours! Plus Earn FREE Glitter Glitz gel for each 25 cards ordered!

Option #1: Button Ornaments!

Price of $1 per card includes Red/White/Green button assortments. Upgrade to Bling buttons available.

Option #2: Wonderland Wonder!


Price of $1 per card includes White Daisy diecut snowflakes.
Sample shows optional Glitter Glitz Upgrade.

Option #3: Paper Ornament!


Price of $1 per card includes diecut plaid/bright stripes Ornament.
Sample shows optional Glitter Glitz Upgrade.

Option #4: Photo Card!


Price of $1 per card includes Sparkles. Photo Mat is reversible, with choice of Bright Stripes (as pictured) or Red Plaid.
Sample shows optional Glitter Glitz Upgrade.
Add your Holiday Photo sized at 3x3 up to 3 3/4 x 4.
Note: You can get precut 3x3's at Scrapbook Pictures for 15 cents each or Photo edit two pictures onto one 4x6 and print at Costco to get 2 for the price of 1!

Can't attend Black Friday Holiday Hoopla? Order Stamp A Stack To-Go Kits, which will come prestamped with Sentiment (unless otherwise requested). The price remains $1 per card, for any number of cards! To-Go Kits can also be shipped for $5 S/H.

The rest of the Black Friday Projects and full pricing will be posted by Wednesday. RSVP deadline is November 11th! Check back November 1st for an awesome November SOTM Blog hop!

H2H Challege + More Swap Sneak Peek

After a fun time at the pumpkin patch today, we came home and I had a nap with Not-So-Baby Max instead of getting up to my room to photograph and post these cards - totally worth it! In any case, Last night I did these two cards, both for my Swap due on November 2nd. 3 down, 1 to go!

The first one is based off the Sketch Challenge from Heart 2 Heart from back at the beginning of October. I used on of the beautiful new Top Coats Icings Overlays for the shiny foil accented borders in the background. I used one of the 4x6 photo overlays, trimmed off the borders, and layered those as ribbons. I find it super helpful to use my Rub & Remove Eraser to help peel off the non-scratch shipping coating from the acrylic image.I stamped and paper pieced the coffee mug using the Stamp set that comes in our upcoming December Club kit called Wonderland. The sentiment is stamped on an oval frame (cut using the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge). Then I accented everything with Stardust glitter glitz! There's a lot of sanding on the Chocolate Cardstock background - I love the super heavy grit on our adorable little sanding block. You just lay that awesome White Core CTMH cardstock on your scratch paper and sand away for that rough crosshatch texture.

The second card for tonight is also for the swap, and uses that same Wonderland paper and stamp set from our upcoming club kit. I paper pieced the mittens in Chocolate and Twilight by stamping the mittens once in each color. Then I trimmed off stripes of the Twilight color and mounted them onto the Chocolate colored image. I filled them in with Stardust (on the blue) and Bronze (on the chocolate) glitter Glitz Gel. Then I triple stamped the Polka Dot Border in twilight and accented with a teeny tiny organdy wrap and bow. Simple and sweet!

Tomorrow my Black Friday peeks continue. Thanks for stopping by!

Sneak Peek #1: Black Friday Stampaganza!

OK - I'm not completely ready to share everything yet, but here's a sneak peek of ONE of the projects for the upcoming Black Friday Stampaganza! If you're new to Stamping Rules, every year I host a day of workshops on Black Friday. Instead of fighting the crowds, we stamp. Instead of buying more stuff, we craft gifts. And if you arrive with a bag of 4 a.m. bargains from Joanns/Target/Freddy's...we don't judge. We just offer snacks and coffee...and show you what we've been working on!

This year's line up of workshops is going to be fab! Here's your first peek: a beautiful Sonoma photo calendar! I like to do photo calendars for gifts for the grandparents each Christmas, and this one is so pretty. My friend Ginni designed this, and I was so excited to cross one item off my huge to do list - and I'm pleased as punch to have such a cute calendar decorating my studio now! It holds a picture for each month, plus an adorable stamped double calendar card, so you can see the current month and the next month's dates on each page!

This fabulous gift is just $15 per kit or you can get your kits for $10 each when you earn your SOTM for November for just $5! Attend Black Friday to assemble, or order your To Go kits pre-cut/stamped and ready to assemble at home. Now who's ready for the holidays?

See ya back here tomorrow for more Sneak Peeks!

Heart 2 Heart Challenge - scrapbooking!

A project I've been planning for a very, very long time is a display of 10 x 10 scrapbook pages as a focal point in my living room. Of course, now that we've bought a house, it's a lot more motivating to work on this project. I've got a few layouts done, and the frames are all purchased - just gotta fill them! I want a wedding page, and one for each boy's birth memorabilia, and I did one for the CTMH cruise in '05. This month I added one of the pics of the three boys from this July, wearing their 4th of July T-shirts.

The focus of the H2H challenge was journaling, something that I really love about scrapbooking. You think you'll remember everything, but life goes so fast that soon people's names are forgotten, and funny details escape you. For these pics I was not around. Daddy took Gramma Debby and Poppa with the three boys to have the pics done. I had gotten these adorable blue and orange coordinating outfits, so those were carefully toted to the photo shoot, since John knew if he dressed them ahead of time they were sure to get dirty. Plus when herding them someplace busy we like to dress them similarly in case one gets lost. "Do you know what your child was wearing?" "He looks just like this one!"

But somehow, the boys never made it from their kickin' around red fourth of July tees into the cute photo shoot clothes. Outfit change forgotten, they got their smiles on in one of their favorite shirts of the summer. So in the end, all is good - we probably have a billion casual shots of them running around in these $5 shirts. But none of them are as cute as these smiles, or clearly capture Max's constant bruise-on-the-forehead condition from summer 2011 (because he could NOT grasp the concept that he's smaller than his brothers, so he got into a lot of scrapes).

Can you see the row of tickets cut on my Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge and stamped with the November SOTM? then I pulled the same Cricut image in a Decorative layer to make my big Journal ticket at the top. The background scallop base and the scallop border are also AP cartridge - told ya I've been addicted lately! Now I just need to put it in the frame and bug John to start hanging my gallery downstairs!

I'm linking this post to the awesome Paper Issues Picnics and Patriots party!