About a month ago I finally invested in Jeanette Lynton's book "Originals"...her how to book on making cards.  She has 99 card ideas in her book along with all the measurements and layouts.  Pretty cool.  Soooo, Over the last few weeks I have been trying out some of her card ideas and having a blast doing it.  Sometimes it's nice to craft without having to come up with all the ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gift For Teachers

With school starting soon, I wanted to make some kind of gift for my children's teachers.  I quickly went through my Cricut cartridges to see what the possibilities were and found a cute box on CTMH's Art Philosophy.  I really love August's stamp of the month, so I decided to use some stamps from that set.  Also love putting the colors Olive, Twilight, Chocolate and Desert Sand together.  It didn't take long to finish this project.  But now I am wondering what is small enough to put in there that the teachers would like?  The box is only 3x3x3 in size, which is the biggest that I could cut on my cricut machine. I'm thinking some kind of chocolate.

August Stamp Of The Month

Each month CTMH has a special stamp of the month that you can purchase for $5.00 when you place a $50.00 order. I wanted to post a couple of cards that I made using paper from "Avonlea" and stamps from the Aug. SOTM. I used Olive for the ink, which is a little bit darker in shade than the Avonlea Green paper, which works for what I wanted to do.
I used Avonlea Teal paper along with Twilight ink.  This I think is a very close match, as far as color goes.  Really love the looks of this new paper packet and stamp set.

August Stamp Class

I have a stamp class on Tuesday.  This month I am featuring CTMH's spray pens. Every lady that attends will not only learn how to use the spray pen, but will also get to take one home:)  It is kind of messy to work with, but a lot of fun.  My sample card for the class:

My 8 almost 9 yr. old daughter's card.  She likes to make cards with me:)

Studio J

Close To My Heart has now made it so that everyone can have free membership to their Studio J computer scrapbooking program.  Because all of our photos are digital they go straight to our computer and never seem to get developed into hard copies, which makes Studio J a much faster and more convenient way for me to scrapbook.  Not to mention, that in Studio J I have access to lots of designs and embellishments.  I love the fact that there is no clean up at the end of my scrapbooking either.  If I am in the middle of designing a page and I have to quit for various reasons, I can save my layout and come back to it later.  Here are a few samples of projects that I have done in Studio J.

It does cost $6.95 to purchase a 2 page layout and the JPG files or you can purchase just the JPG files for $2.95.  You can begin creating your own pages by clicking on "shop with me now".  Go to  "products" and click on "Studio J Online Scrapbooking".  Create an account and you can start having fun.

Creative Challenges

This week I had a friend ask me to create some kind of decoration that could go around her homemade soap.  It's interesting coming up with designs for other people, because what they are looking for is sometimes different than what you have in mind, but one must look at it as a challenge, not a problem.  My first set of pictures is what I came up with originally. I think it's very pretty, but not quite what my friend had in mind.  My friend wanted something rustic and old fashioned for her soap.  It took me some time to come up with a new idea.  I went through all my paper craft magazines and Idea books from CTMH and then spent some time on pinterest to get some ideas of "rustic".  Then I set to work recreating something new. Here they are:

 

I made it with an extra page behind so that my friend could write all of her recipe out.

Here's my rustic version. The 2 tags are for her soap recipe as well.  I think I like this one better.

 

PS. The stamps that I used to write out the letters and numbers were from a different company.  Everything else is from CTMH.



Card For Upcoming Party

I have a "Meet and Greet" party with some of the ladies from my church next week.  I can't wait to have a chance to get to know some of the ladies that I go to church with!  Seems like things are always so busy at church that we never quite get around to getting to know everyone.  At this party I am going to introduce CTMH to the ladies by letting them make a card.  Yesterday I came up with a design for them to copy.  I wanted something that would be easy.  So, here it is!