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!