Artbooking Made Easy: Festive Mini Albums

I'm so excited to give this a try now that I have the Artbooking cartridge! No one needs a better excuse to Get Crafty, especially during the Holiday season, then making a cute Holiday Mini Album! I'm planning to make one myself in the next week or so, I'll share a tutorial and maybe I'll make a video tutorial to make things interesting! I will also make kits available for purchase, so that you can make your own Mini Album! Have fun and Get Crafty! Happy Halloween, my friends!

Project Sneak Peak

This week I've started working on this really cool project and its been a lot more time consuming then I anticipated, but I think the end results are going to be wonderful! I'm excited but I'm not going to give away the surprise! Can you guess what it is?

I'll be taking tomorrow off to spend with my kids! Trick-or-treating and all! So, make sure to check back on Friday and hopefully I'll have a look at my latest project! Happy Halloween!

Trendy Trims

Another fabulous and very crafty video for you.  I plan on working on some fun projects tomorrow and I hope to get them posted up. Sorry for being so slow about this, but my first day back at it didn't go quite as well as I had hoped! I'll be back up on my feet soon! Enjoy! Get Crafty!

Clearly the Best: Connect the Dots (S02E03)

I'm sorry I didn't blog much this week. All my crafting fun had to be put on hold when my kids all got sick this last week, followed by myself and my Hubby! It was a fairly miserable and exhausting week. I hope to have tons of super fun projects to blog about this week, but I hope you'll bear with me as I work on getting back into the swing of things this week. So for now, I hope you'll enjoy watching some fun crafting!

Lace-Work Birthday Card

Today I have another super cute card that can be used for all sorts of occasions, but today I picked to make it into a Birthday card for my Sister-in-law. What actually got the idea going was the butterfly. I had this random Butterfly cut-out from when I'd been playing around with my Art Philosophy cartridge. I really wanted to use it in something cute, so I flipped through the booklet for the cartridge when I saw this lace-work piece and it clicked. The idea for this card was born! Lol, OK a little dramatic, but I really did get excited about putting these two objects together to create a card.

So I fitted the lace-work image to fit a 6"x6" card and cut it from the Olive cardstock, which I think gives it an ivy look. I then sponged the butterfly with Gypsy ink to give it this beautiful coloring and placed some fun clear sparkles on its wings. I use a small amount of liquid glass to help secure the sparkles since I've found that sometimes they don't like to stay stuck where you've placed them. Then I decided to use the same cartridge to cut out an oval shape in Autumn Terracotta, wanting to tie these beautiful outdoor colors together and add the pop of Fall. I used the Art Philosophy Celebration stamps to stamp the 'Happy Birthday', as well as the Swirls Around stamps and the You Are My Happy stamps.



I used Olive, Gypsy & Crystal Blue ink. I also decided to test an image to say 'Hey, this is made by me!' I think it has potential. It was stamped in Gypsy, then I wrote my initials and the year around it. Followed by placing small dots of liquid glass on each point. What do you think?


Want to be able to may your own fun and super cute cards or scrapbook pages? Go HERE and check out Close To My Heart products, where you can buy what I used today, as well as so much more!

Artbooking Made Easy: Everyday Layouts (S01E08)

Check out these super amazing Everyday Layouts! So gorgeous and so easy! Want to purchase your own Artbooking Cricut cartridge, go HERE to order right now!

Polka Dotted Birthday Wish

Hey All! I hope you're all finding time to be crafty as the weather starts to get colder! I had so much fun making this card and I used No Patterns for this one! A week or two ago I had cut out an entire sheet of Colonial White circles using my CTMH Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge and I decided to keep the piece of cardstock that I'd cut all the circles from (you never know when it might come in handy).

I wanted to make a super fun Birthday card and so I used the leftover sheet and sponged the ink into the circles on the front of the 6"x6" card. It left an awesome pattern. Then I used some of the circle cut outs and sponged them in three different colors, the placed them over the circles on card in an alternating pattern and gave them some pop by placing 3-D Foam underneath!

I had a lot of fun making this great card and it was so easy!

Supplies I Used:
Colonial White Cardstock- 1388
Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge- Z1686
Art Philosophy Celebration Stamps(Included with cartridge)
You Are My Happy Stamps (National Stamping Month Stamp set)
3-D Foam tape- Z1151
Sparkles
Inks: Black (Z2105), Olive(Z2137), Gypsy(Z2190), & Autumn Terracotta(Z2101)

Clearly the Best: A Burst of Creativity

I love how beautiful this card is and how so much of it came from paper scraps from other projects! So, I guess a good tip is: don't throw your scraps away, because you never know when they'll come into use! I hope you enjoyed this great video and now have your own fun ideas brewing for something fabulous!

Clearly the Best: Preserve with Pizazz (S02E02)

If you love Family History, check out this video on how to add some "Pizazz" to yours! I'm disconnecting for the weekend to spend time with my family! I hope you have an amazing weekend and I look forward to sharing fun new things next week!

Artbooking Made Easy (S01E05): Halloween Mini Albums

Such a super cute idea! I will be offering cute Mini Albums for sale in the next week or so! Contact me to order yours today!

Autumn Birthday Cards

I'm finding that I really love the fall colors on my projects lately! I mean I know its that time of year, but seeing such beautiful colors pop-out on the page is just gorgeous! I think I need to invest in some rich fall red color and do some cards with a little pop of that! This project I kept pretty simple, but I was pleasantly surprised by how they turned out! These cute Autumn Birthday Cards are 3"x3", so super cute and small! (I'll have to tell you how much it costs to send these tiny cards).

I decided to go with the rich beautiful Autumn Terracotta for the card base, added two 2 1/2"x 3/4" strips of Olive cardstock, one 2 1/2"x 3/4" strip the of the cute Polka Dot cardstock from Babycakes pack and 1"x3" strip of Cashmere cardstock. I also used some Colonial White round cut-outs from Art Philosophy Cartridge to stamp the little fall images.

I also used the Art Philosophy Celebration stamps for the 'Celebrate' and 'Happy Birthday.'  A Touch of Fall stamp set was where I got the cute images of the pumpkin, wheat, leaf and acorn. I absolutely love how simple these images are, but how beautiful they turned out, giving the right amount of pop! I love how these cards turned out. I used some 3-D Foam tape to pop up one of the round stamped images inside the card for a super cute surprise! I also used Black, Chocolate, Cashmere & Autumn Terracotta ink.

As a beginner cardmaker, I found that your cards don't have to be the most elaborate pieces of work to turn out absolutely gorgeous! I enjoyed playing with these stamps to make such great birthday cards! I hope the ladies I made them for love them as much as I do!

*If you are interested in getting the Touch of Fall stamp for yourself, contact me and I'll tell you how you can receive this fabulous incentive stamp!

Fall Into Artbooking & CTMH Clubs!

Fall is here and now, I'm waiting for the infamous Utah winter to come raging in without warning! The last few days have been pretty miserable, cold and rainy, and I know snow is just waiting to dump on us. Its that time of year, where doing fun and often crafty projects is a must. I mean we have cold weather coming in (in most places, but not all), the holidays with our friends & family and Christmas (who isn't delighted with homemade gifts?) Now is the time to hunker in and get our craft on! Hooray! I've never needed much reason to do some sort of crafting, but now I'm an Independent Consultant with Close To My Heart, I really have the opportunity to be crafty! I tell my Hubby, "Hey I have work to do, let me know if you need me!" and off I go or "Let me bring my stamps & stuff in, I'll make cards while we watch our show." I have a very supportive Husband, if you can't tell! With the Fall weather coming in and Winter right around the corner, I thought wouldn't it be fun to start a club where a group of us can get together and get crafty? Since I live in the middle of nowhere, what a better way to get the local ladies out of the house and have fun? So here is the info for my very Club: I would love to start a Close to My Heart monthly club.I would need 10 people to join who would be willing to purchase at least $15.00 from CTMH each month, and would get a turn at being the hostess and collecting the free product rewards. You would commit to joining for 10 months that way everyone gets a chance to be a hostess. Sound like fun?? Cold winter months are coming, why not stock up on card and scrapbook supplies. I would like to start it soon, let me know what you think. It will be a monthly gathering in my home or at the ACS Building. (If you are not local, you can enter your order on line or i can do it for you) We will do a make and take for a chance to see new product in action. We will get started in November. Feel free to invite friends, the sooner we get 10 people,the sooner we can get started! (Mind you this came straight from my Facebook page, Crafty With Pixie Stedding)

Are you interested? Contact me and we'll have a blast! I'll set up a Facebook page for the club, so everyone near & far can stay in contact. I'll post fun tips and suggestions, as well as project instructions, etc for members. I can't wait to get this going! I'm leaning toward making some cute Base & Bling hairclips as one of our first make & takes! So don't miss this opportunity!

I'll leave you tonight with a super fun video from CTMH about Fall Artbooking! You won't want to miss this!

Background Stamps

Background stamping is such a great technique and so much fun to do. I know I say this about everything, but full of so many possibilities! Its something I love about scrapbooking & papercrafting is that you can use anything to create beautiful layouts, cards and more. My sister and I were talking about one of the paper packs in Close To My Heart's Autumn/Winter catalog (Babycakes) the other day. I love this pack, because I see the possibilities that lay beyond the baby theme. In fact I used the super cute polka dotted paper on a Halloween layout and it looked great. When you look at stamps & papers, see the endless possibilities and you will go far!

Artbooking Made Easy (S01E06): Designed Décor Flip Stand Album

Looking for a new sort of papercrafting project? Watch this great video and see another great project that's so easy to make!

Crafty & Halloween!

I love Halloween! Its one of my favorite times of year! I'll admit I'm a sucker for dressing up! My kids are like my Hubby and I, and love to dress up too! It makes for a very fun month. As a CTMH Consultant, I have excuses to buy cute stamps and papers to make fun cards. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to make cards for hours each day while watching a religious conference on TV. (Its nice having an excuse to be crafty!)

I decided to work on some Birthday cards for this last month (I'm so bad and behind) and some for this month. I'll just show you the cute Halloween ones I made this time around, but be on the lookout for more later!

Cards are so much fun to make, because there are infinite possibilities. No two people think alike and therefore create alike.

 I used a pattern from CTMH's Originals book for cardmaking. Picking a pattern can be an important step, but once you've decided you can do anything with that. I used a sheet of Colonial White cardstock cut into a 6"x6" card and sponged it with Autumn Terracotta ink to give it a bit more color, but still keeping it soft.

I find it makes doing a project a lot easier if you pre-cut all the papers you need, that way you can put it together quickly and efficiently! I used a 6"x2" strip of Cashmere cardstock, 5"x3" piece of Babycakes paper (I used the side with the letters on it), 4 3/4" x2 3/4" of Autumn Terracotta cardstock and a strip of paper from the top of the dotted sheet of paper from Babycakes pack.

  I used stamp sets: Creepy Creatures (C1522) and Heartfelt Birthday Wish (M1033). Other supplies I used 3-D Foam tape, Black, Chocolate, Autumn Terracotta and Cashmere ink. I used a fun technique where I stamped the images I wanted twice on separate sheets of paper (as in the skeleton), then I cut out the pieces I wanted to use to pop on the image. I cut the head, the ribs, the pelvis and his cane, then using 3-D Foam tape I stuck those pieces on top of the other image to create a great pop out!

I also used the foam tape to make the moon, bat and star images stand out on the inside. Tying together the inside with the outside of the card! I had so much fun trying new things.


My second card was a lot more simple, but still so much fun and looks great!  I used 5 1/2"x4 1/2" Autumn Terracotta card, 4 1/2"x1 1/2" Polka dot paper from Babycakes, 3"x3" Colonial White cardstock, and 3"x4" Olive Cardstock.

 I used Creepy Creatures stamp set again (I love how cute these little creatures are!) and Heartfelt Birthday Wish stamp set. I also used Black & Autumn Terracotta ink, 3-D Foam tape and liquid glass. The front side of the card base was stamped over in a cute pattern with rats, bats and moons in the same color of ink as the paper giving a subtle patterned paper. I used the liquid glass to pop out the look of the orange polka dots, such a fun technique. Cute Mr. Vampire has the fabulous pop out look, just like on the first card. I kept the inside simpler, but still cute! What a fun set of cards to give for October birthdays!

Tools of the Trade

Base & Bling Fabric Necklace Kit

 

Check out this really cool and unique kit that Close To My Heart sells! I have to admit it looks so simple, even I want to give it a try! ;)

Snowflakes & Butterflies

 Hello My Crafty Friends! Welcome to October! I'm super excited to see what new and wonderful things I can create & do this month. October 1st marked the beginning of Close To My Heart's new quarter and beginning of the earning period for our new Incentive Trip: Hawaii! I've made some goals so that I can earn this trip! I hope you will all want to help me out! I also am about $600 short of beginners goal to sell $1200 in the first 90 days. I get free product and points toward my Incentive trip by making this goal, which gives me more fabulous items for super fun projects and kits! So, my first goal for the new quarter is to sell at least $600 worth of product and to hold to Home Gatherings this month. I will have some incentives available for those who set up Gatherings and put in orders; more details to follow!

Now on to this simple easy and super cute set of projects I've made as Hostess gifts (so book your Gathering with me to receive yours)! 

This first one I started with a sheet of Colonial White cardstock and used my Cricut & the Art Philosophy cartridge to cut a super cute card with the snowflake image. I loved it and thought it was perfect for the upcoming Holidays. I used a bit of natural rafia to tie a cute bow through the snowflake. Now if you're wanting to add some more color to your card, then use some of our alcohol-based markers and color in the rafia to add some pop of color. Next I sponged some Crystal Blue ink onto a small square of cardstock, which I then trimmed to fit on the backside of the front of the card and glued it into place. This pop of color behind your snowflake cutout gives the card some character! And finally I placed a super cute snowman and the phrase, from the Flakey Friends stamp set, on a clear block and stamped the images using Crystal Blue! Wa-la you have a simple and cute Holiday card!

 Here is the second card, also cut from Colonial White cardstock using the Art Philosophy cartridge. I used the same techniques for this as the first card. I used Gypsy ink to sponge on the cardstock behind the butterfly and stamped A True Thank You on front. The inside I used the butterfly and phrase from You Are My Happy stamp set (September's National Stamping Month set).

To give the butterfly its two toned coloring, while using our alcohol-based markers is the easiest option, I actually used q-tips to apply the colors I wanted. I used Olive ink for the phrase. To finish the card off, I glued the rafia bow to the front using Liquid Glass (this has so many uses)!

I hope you enjoyed learning these how to make these super cute cards.

Items Used
Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge (Z1686)- $99
You Are My Happy (National Stamping Month stamp)
Flakey Friends stamp set (C1506)- $13.95
A True Thank You stamp ( M1029)- $2.95
Gypsy Ink (Z2190)- $5.25
Olive Ink (Z2137)-$5.25
Crystal Blue Ink (Z2160)- $5.25
Colonial White cardstock (1388)- $9.50

Want to explore and see what other fun products we have available? Click HERE to check out my website.