My latest woo-hoo's! Yeah!

Close To My Heart had recently revamped their internal "Make It From Your Heart" contest for consultants. Now they have the contest tied in with releases of new Idea Books, and I sent in entries for the first one: the Summer 2010 contest. I am excited to say that two of my entries placed! The winning artwork has been posted on the Close To My Heart website, you can see it here: Summer 2010 Contest Winners. I had previously posted the cards in an earlier post sharing new artwork. I placed under the "My Reflections Passages" category:



And I also placed under the "My Acrylix Something Splendid August Stamp of the Month" category:



Thanks for looking!

Dani

Long time, no post!

It's been busy, busy, busy! I have still been doing some creative stuff, but I simply haven't had time to post anything. With the end of school combined with a lot of away soccer tournaments, free time was at a premium.

Here are a couple of the projects that I've been doing -- better late than never, right? First, I got the awesome new Go-To Sketches book by Paper Crafts. And I also got the coordinating Card Companion kit by Doodlebug Design to make 18 of the cards shown throughout the book. So I've been making one or a few cards here and there when I found an opportunity until I finally finished all 18 of them:

Sorry for the nasty pics, I just snapped quick ones on my craft table. The cards turned out really cute! If you prefer step-by-step directions, with clear instructions on putting everything together -- this is definitely not for you. :-) You are given a pack of supplies, you have the pictures shown of the finished cards in the book -- and that is just about it. In addition, you also have to cut out every single printed embellishment provided, nothing is die-cut.

There are more than enough supplies provided though, I have a lot of scraps -- more than enough to make more cards:

I have cardstock, patterned paper, templates, and even embellishments leftover. I did decide a few times to add my own sentiments and accents here and there from my stash, so not all of mine are EXACTLY as originally shown too. It's all going into a bag to work on later, as I have a lot of other projects to get to now.

I've also been working on a project for Delaney's soccer team. I decided to make a digital print this time around instead of a mini scrapbook, as I knew we were cramped for time and I could easily make one for everyone on the team a lot quicker. Here is Delaney's version:

I thought they turned out really nice. Now we just need to find a frame and a spot in the soccer room to hang up Dee's new picture.

Now, I'm afraid I have some hemming and altering to do. I'd rather be papercrafting, so hopefully it won't take too long!

Dani

A lot of new art to share and the Open House winner!

With being out of town so much lately, I am afraid that I am really behind on some things. Sorry for posting the Open House synopsis so late! It was great to see everyone at the Summer 2010 Open House. We had a couple of great free make-n-takes that everyone did and also a lot of new products on display. I thought I'd share some art made with new products for those of you who weren't able to attend.

First, here is a card made with each of our four new My Reflections sets released in the Summer 2010 Idea Book:



This card is made with our new Cherry-O My Reflections kit papers, with a new stamp set D1426 Over the Rainbow. I think it was fun to use some non-traditional colors in creating the rainbow and sun. :-)

This card is made with our new Passages My Reflections kit papers as well as our awesome new Clear Cards. This is made with the new clear scalloped circle card. The new clear cards make it easy for some peek-a-boo effects with your cards. I added a fun effect with the piercing tool, punching some holes inside each scalloped edge.



This card was made with our new Splendor My Reflections kit as well as a new stamp set D1427 Tasty Treats for the inside of the flowers with the set D1361 Thank You for the sentiments. I had fun making some "accordian" fold flowers, stitching and paper piecing with this card.



This card is made with our new Zippidee My Reflections kit, the new D1433 My Game sports phrases set, and the set C1392 In The Game-Soccer as well as the clear cards again. Of course, my sport card just HAS to have a soccer theme.

Next I'm going to share some art made with each of the new Stamp of the Month sets in the Summer 2010 Idea book. As you know, each Stamp of the Month set is only available for that month! And remember -- you can purchase it at regular price or with a minimum qualifying purchase, get it at a great discount or even FREE!



This is a 12x12 spread made with May's Stamp of the Month D1421 Cherish the Moment. I used the You Rock My Reflections kit papers for this layout, which is celebrating my kids' awesome reading accomplishments at school.



This card is made with June's Stamp of the Month D1422 Wonderful Friend. I used the Veranda My Reflections kit papers for this card. I have my Father's Day card all ready to go, hopefully my dad isn't checking out my CTMH blog. Ha!



This card is made with July's Stamp of the Month D1423. I used the Tinkerin' My Reflections kit papers and the new My Creations A-door-ables to create the interactive window. Isn't that little guy so cute?



And I guess I'm ready for Mother's Day next year! This card is made with August's Stamp of the Month D1424 Something Splendid. I used the Splendor My Reflections kit papers and several of our Dimensional Elements on this card.

I'm sure that you are all SO OVER with the art now and just want to know who the Grand Prize winner was! (* drum roll please *)

The winner was: Jennifer K! I hope you've been enjoying your prize, Jennifer!

If you haven't yet received your Summer 2010 Idea Book, make sure to get in touch with me and get a copy!

Dani

Summer 2010 Idea Book Open House - this Saturday, May 15th!

Summer 2010 Idea Book Open House:

Saturday, May 15th from 9am - 2pm!
 

Here are some sneak peeks from the Idea Book:

There will be:
 

• New product and artwork on display
  

 

• Two FREE make-n-take products, here's one using May's Stamp of the Month set Cherish the Moment:
  
  
  

 

• Open House-only specials (draw for FREE shipping, 10-30% off your order, FREE product, and more!)
  

 

• Party and sign-up specials, including a never-before-seen Incentive to host a Gathering (a way to start out with $100 in Hostess Rewards before your guests even make their FREE project)
  

 

• Door prizes and Grand Prize - the Grand Prize is valued at over $80*! Check out all you can win:
  
  
  

 

• Retired Stamp Set Sale! Yep, every Summer Idea Book Open House I try to see which retired stamp sets I think I can live without. :-) I have around 70 sets to select from, priced at 40% off! Woo-hoo! First-come, first-serve -- get here early for the best selection.

 

• A small selection of products, ready to take home immediately -- including: stamp sets, ribbon, mini-albums, embellishments, and more!
  

 

• Light snacks and refreshments
  

 

• Studio J is live! I have a couple of samples for you to see at the Open House.
  
  
  

 

I can't wait to see all of you Saturday!

Dani

New Challenge: The Three Cheers for Chairs Challenge

Moxie Fab's latest challenge was creating a project with a chair/couch/sofa in some way. I could only find one couch in my collection of stamp sets -- so that was what I went with! I used the stamp set D1370 Welcome Home (couch), D1348 Priceless Love Word Puzzle (sentiment & frame), and D1412 Noted Backgrounds (background text strip) to create this card:



Since I wanted to emphasize the sentiment "you color my world," I kept the main portion of the card black and white. I stamped the couch multiple times in the background in black, then added a strip stamped with some distressed text in black. I stitched the entire edge with a zig-zag stitch with embroidery floss, then added some color!

The couch was stamped in Tulip. I stamped it twice to add some dimension, the couch itself is popped up, then the front seat of the couch is popped up as well. I paper pieced a couple of "pillows" out of some patterned paper from the Caboodle paper pack, and added some red sparkles to the couch ends and an extra "pillow" with a button. The frame for the sentiment was stamped in Tulip ink, then the sentiment was stamped inside with Black ink. I added some dots to the frame and colored in the word color with some coordinating colors to the pillows on the couch. Then a few finishing touches: black grosgrain ribbon under the sentiment, some white sparkles underneath, and a couple of tulip photo corners -- and it's all finished!

Here's my one and only couch card! Enjoy!

Dani

Studio J is live!

Close To My Heart's online design software, Studio J™, is live! Studio J™ can help you create 2-page layouts faster, simpler and easier -- saving you time and money! The software is free, you can create an account to start designing complete layouts in minutes. You can create as many layouts as you'd like, with no charge until you decide to print out your layouts.

I tried Studio J™ for the first time earlier, and I created a great soccer spread of Delaney's first Spring 2010 tournament. I've shared it before, but I'll share it again:



For more information, there is a flyer on Studio J™ for you to check out, and you can also start playing around with Studio J™ today on my website! Simply create an account (at no charge) to start designing your digital layouts!

Why Studio J™?

• It's a FREE service - no sign up fees, no digital kits or software to buy! You pay for nothing for using the software, you only pay when you order your layouts (and there are great bonuses for doing those in multiples too).
• It helps you create beautiful layouts: faster, simpler & easier!
• If you've been designated the official scrapbooker of your entire extended family - this is perfect for you! You create the layout once, and then simply print out as many as you need for everyone to receive their own copy. There is no need to recreate the exact layout multiple times!
• There are some fun adjustments you can make digitally, that are simply impossible to do normally, such as resize stickers to any size you want and color embellishments to any color in the kit.
• There are extra scrapbooking kits to select from on Studio J™ including exclusive kits only available through Studio J™ as well as a few retired sets! Woo-hoo!

Try it out today and let me know all about it! :-)

Dani

New Challenge: Card with a Speech Bubble

Moxie Fab's new challenge was creating a project with a Speech Bubble in their April 7, 2010 post. Since we have an entire stamp set devoted to cute little speech bubbles, I had to try this one too. :-) Using our stamp set D1405 Leave Your Mark, I created this card:



I kept it to a black/white card with a splash of color with Sunny Yellow. The background was stamped with C1342 Damask Tiles, which turned out so pretty I thought. I'll definitely be using that for a background again. Then the lady, dress and sentiment was from D1349 Be Yourself. I love this stamp set - so much fun to play with. It was an old Stamp of the Month special, that is coming BACK in our upcoming Summer 2010 Idea Book. So if you missed it the first time around, it will be available again next month. Then I added some stitching, a flower, and some sparkles for a bit of bling. Voila! Here's my cute speech bubble card!

Enjoy!
Dani

Paper Piecing: Love This Technique!

Keeping up with one of my favorite blogs, I caught Moxie Fab's Picking Up the Pieces Challenge in their March 25, 2010 post. I love paper piecing, so I definitely had to try this one. I think it's because I'm a bit lazy with coloring at times, and this gives me glorious color and texture in a quick and easy way. :-) So here's my challenge entry:



I pulled some scraps from the Daydream paper pack and had fun with it! I cut out a strip from the striped paper and made "grass" on the bottom of the card. I stamped the umbrella and rubber boots from the Springtime stamp set in some fun patterns and pieced them together. I stamped the sun and sentiment with hearts from the ADORABLE Over the Rainbow stamp set - a new set coming in our Summer 2010 Idea Book. I attached the umbrella, boots and sun with 3-D Foam Tape for some dimension. And last, but not least, I used some Bitty Sparkles to dress up the umbrella, sun & sentiment. I have a rough time photographing sparkles and glitter -- but they look so cute IRL! I think if you click on the image to see it in more detail, you can at least see them better.

This is my first card made with some new Summer products! Now off to play with some more!!!

Dani

Flower Pot artwork - April's Stamp of the Month!

I love this month's stamp of the month: Flower Pot! I had so much fun messing around with it -- I finally had to make myself put it away as I have many other projects to try to accomplish. :-)



This is the first one I made, making a "window" through the window of the stamp in the card. I used paper from the Moon Doogie pack, with the colors Cranberry, Sorbet & New England Ivy. When you open the card, you see this:

Sometimes a classic, simple card is all you need. For this one I stamped the flowers and then made a mask before stamping the pot -- so the flowers would appear to be overlapping the flower pot. Then I colored the entire image with our watercolor pencils. They blend so well, it looks very pretty. You should be able to click on this (and most images) to see a better-resolution image.

I was playing around with the small floral image, and it lends itself to creating a border beautifully -- even around a circle! Try to do THAT with a wooden stamp! I did have to mask the ending again, so that the frame seemed endless. Then I colored in the stamped border with markers coordinating with the paper I chose from the Boom-Di-Ada pack.

For some reason, the window image is so much fun to play with. I added some mini-brads to the shutters this time, and put some "drapes" behind the window with ribbon. It turned out so cute - love it! The sentiment is from Welcome Home and the papers are from the Sarsaparilla pack.

For this last card, I colored in the images with the watercolor pencils - making an impromptu color palette on some cardstock and pulling the colors with our blending pen. It gives such a soft and pretty effect and makes it easy to blend colors. The sentiment is from Buttoned Together with papers from the Veranda paper pack.



Okay, no more time for playing with this set now! I need to move on to the next project. Hopfully more to come soon!

Dani

Fun with Easter Eggs!

Here's the latest artwork that I accomplished, a very seasonable project. :-) I thought it turned out so cute!

My sister gave me this neat egg carton, which instead of having 6x2 rows for eggs - had 4x3 rows for eggs. It still held a dozen eggs, just a bit differently. And of course, I had to decorate more than just the carton! The carton color left a bit to be desired, so I mixed up a little reinker with the Delta Ceramcoat paint and painted it first. :-)



These are real eggs decorated up. (My husband was sooooooo nice and "blew" out all the eggs for me and got them ready to go. How nice is that? And then the kids had scrambled eggs for a few days... HA!). First I painted them with some of our Create-a-Shade Pearl Paint mixed up with a little Delta Ceramcoat paint (for opacity) and reinkers (for color). Then I just had fun decorating them up with paper, flowers, ribbon, sparkles and more!



I even decorated up the inside of the carton. The papers were from our Caboodle kit, which inspired the color scheme for the whole project: Buttercup, Crystal Blue, Sorbet & Sweet Leaf. It was fun to do an Easter project without using the typical pastel Easter colors. I used a variety of stamp sets while decorating this up: D1338 Bird Basics, D1332 Boutique Borders, D1259 Eastertime, D1415 Springtime & C1405 In the Month of April.



What do you think? I was so happy with it! Hopefully more art to continue here soon!

Dani

My first Studio J layout!

I finally got around to making my first Studio J layout. I used a lot of photos that we had just taken at Delaney's first soccer tournament for the Spring 2010 season. (Yep, it's started already.)

I think it turned out really great! I'll have the layout here to showcase at the next Open House for the Summer 2010 Idea Book for everyone to see.



What do you guys think? LMK!

Dani

New Trend: Doilies and Lace!

If you read the Moxie Fab World blog, you will know that Doilies and Lace are an upcoming trend! :-) They had a great post about it on March 4, 2010. If you've never checked their blog out, I highly recommend it. They have such wonderful art and inspiration galore!

In fact I was so inspired by this post, that I decided to try to enter their Moxie Fab World Challenge - Diggin' on Doilies and Lace. Here's my card:



Most every part of the design -- minus the sentiment, cardstock, ribbon and sparkles -- is ALL LACE! I have the background piece stamped with a tone-on-tone lace design. Then I have a large border of lace stamped towards the bottom of the card, with a small lace corner accent and a small lace flower by the sentiment. But my most fun addition is my "lace flower" that I created out of a small little curved lace stamp and attached with 3-D Foam Tape for some dimension. (I built it up around a circle punch and kept layering it on top of each other to create the flower.)

I knew just what stamp set I wanted to use for the lace accents for this challenge, a beautiful stamp set by Close To My Heart: C1297 Lovely Lace. No brainer there, huh? Then I was browsing through my other sets to find the right sentiment, and "True happiness is drawn from the heart" just seemed to be it from D1365 True Happiness.



For my colors, I found my inspiration from a Spring 2010 Pantone Color report:

See my sad little circle on the top right there? I was matching their turquoise and tomato puree color with CTMH colors. I decided on Ocean and Tulip with White Daisy for the final color scheme. I can honestly say that I don't know if I would have chosen those colors on my own -- but they worked so well! It's fun sometimes to stretch your boundaries and try new color schemes. I always seem to be naturally drawn to earth tones, so those brighter colors are exciting to mess around with.

With my relatively recent diagnosis, most of you know that my whole life has had to adjust to my chronic health issues. I've been struggling a lot with finding time to create, since I used to just craft away at night after the kiddos went to bed and stay up until the wee morning hours with no worries on my end. Now, I know I need to listen to my body (which always seems to be tired way too early) and get to bed at a decent time. So.... finding creative time has been a continual struggle.

I'm making a point to try to give myself permission to create during the day sometimes, instead of just always doing the never-ending house chores, because I miss it so much! I made a couple of Baby's First Calendars for the kids' teachers just recently, which really brought how much I missed creating to my attention. I have a huge list of "wants" to accomplish, and the first one on the list was create a card for the Moxie Fab World Challenge - Diggin' on Doilies and Lace. Check... first item accomplished! Woo-hoo!

Moving on to my next project...

Dani

Open House Art & Grand Prize Winner!

It was so nice to see many of you at the Spring 2010 Open House. We had two beautiful cards for everyone to make, as well as new products to see and some art to share. I thought I'd share a few of my favorite pieces from the Open House here for everyone to see:



I love the You Rock papers and stamps. I had a lot of fun stamping with the "distressed" stamps making this card. The colors I used are Barn Red, New England Ivy, Desert Sand, Bamboo, Olive and Chocolate.



This one is using our new Topstitch papers with the January SOM set True Friends. I stamped the sentiment and mini-frame in Vineyard Berry on Baby Pink cardstock, colored in the trim with a Crystal Blue marker, cut it out and attached it with 3-D squares.



Getting a little ahead of myself, I was playing with February's SOM set Piece of Cake. I stamped everything in Black and then colored in with our markers. I used the bright, vivid colors of Topiary, Holiday Red, Star Spangled Blue and Sunny Yellow. I used one of the cakes with several candles to make the "border" of candles on the bottom of the card.



This card is using the GORGEOUS Felicity kit, the current special. The flowers, flourishes and papers are all part of Felicity. The sentiment is from this upcoming April's SOM Flower Pot. I rolled the flowers to achieve the two-toned look: Sorbet rolled in Barn Red, Barn Red rolled in Garnet and Desert Sand rolled with Barn Red. (Remember to always roll in a lighter color to darker color, and to always clean off your stamp in between each impression.) The flourishes are stamped in Chocolate with the sentiment in Garnet. Very pretty - love the Felicity kit!



This card is using the Bella papers with new Spring Blossom flowers and butterflies with the new Filigree Charms. I also stamped the largest flower with one of the new background sets, the word print from Noted Backgrounds.



You guessed it! OF COURSE I got the new soccer stamp set: In the Game - Soccer. I used it with the You Rock papers, stamped the "net" in Grey Flannel, then the sentiment in Outdoor Denim. The two stars I cut out of one of the patterned papers and attached as well.

Well, actually I guess this one doesn't have anything NEW in it -- it's just cute! I love our felt die-cuts and was playing around with them again. I am using the cute little squirrel from the Wonder HeartFelt Die-Cuts with the Twitterpated papers. If you haven't played with our felt embellishments yet, you are missing out on some awesome embellishments!



I just had to play around with the You Rock stamp sets again, this time using the Jingle papers. I'm sure I'll be using them a lot since Delaney got a Rock Band guitar for her birthday with the country pack.



Birds are in, trendy and NOW! I love all our cute birdie sets - I think I got all of them! I used papers from Daydream, the tree from Grown with Love in Cocoa, the birds and sentiments are from our new set Love Birds. Too cute! Delaney helped me design this one, so it is obviously her favorite of the bunch!



Even the Felicity kit has a couple of birds in the stamp set. This one is using the flourishes and birds from the Felicity stamp set, with the sentiment from the new set Love Birds and the Grace papers. I absolutely adore the "Somebirdy Loves You" sentiment.

This card is made with one of our new cute little A-size sets. I inked the bird in Creme Brulee, then took a foam texture tool and sponged some Tulip for the birds breast, then stamped it on Creme Brulee cardstock. Too cute!

I know, I know -- you're saying ENOUGH with the art already, I want to know who won the Grand Prize drawing at the Open House. Well, the winner is:

... Anne Schieve! Sometimes it does help to increase your odds by having a bunch of tickets in the drawing! :-) Enjoy your prize, Anne!

If you haven't yet received your Spring 2010 Idea Book, make sure to get in touch with me and get a copy!

Dani