National Stamping Month

September is National Stamping Month and to celebrate Close to My Heart is offering a triple stamp set for $10 with each $50 you spend.  The set contains

One alphabet (upper and lowercase)

One sheet of 9 encouraging, friendship sentiments

One sheet of 15 cheerful images great for a variety of life’s occasions.

This is a limited edition stamp set, available September 1-30 only.



The September crop will be on Saturday the 21st, from 9am until 9pm or anytime in between.  The featured kit is Huntington.  Orders are due by September 10.  This is an Ink Club month, and your $50 purchase also qualifies you for the September stamp of the month for only $5!

Back to School

Saturday was our Back to School Crop - thanks to every one who joined us!  (We missed you, Kristen!).  The only thing "back to school-y" about this crop was the timing and the sack lunches.  I like it when I can use my scrapping stuff to dress up the ordinary.

Laughing Dragonflies

The August crop is this Saturday - 9am until 9pm or anytime in between.  The featured kit is Laughing Lola.  This layout is my own creation, but you can recreate it with the following supplies:

Laughing Lola paper pack

Brown & Tan glitter paper

Artbooking cartridge

Art Philosophy cartridge

Adhesives

It's the same gold and black paisley paper on both side, my lighting was just a little off.

The honeycomb overlay is from the Artbooking cartridge, page 41, 11".  I randomly cut it apart and used it on both sides of the layout.  The dragonflies are a variety of sizes from the Art Philosophy cartridge, page 24,

 from 2.25" to 1.75" on the dual dragonflies, 

and down to half an inch for these tiny ones.  The actual colors are much better in person than I was able to capture in the photos.  Drop by and check it out on Saturday!

Mojo Monday 307

I thought this layout from Mojo Monday was going to be a breeze -



















 - but I ended up scrapping my first attempt then settled on this one.

I don't keep every little scrap, but in this case I was able to use a piece I normally toss - mostly because I'm running low on Cocoa cardstock.  You never notice the missing flourish from the card!

I was working on a layout with this great Buzz and Bumble paper and it's theme carried over into this card.  The missing flourish is from this layout.

 

This is fully scrap lifted from Tamra Pope.  If you have some of this paper pack left, check out the great details on her site (and other posts!) by clicking her name.

Color Dare #56

My entry for the Color My Heart Dare this week.   The lagoon paper is from the Later Sk8r pack.  The flowers are rosette ribbon died with buttercup re-inker.  The vine/leaves are from the Artbooking cartridge, page 72, 4",real dial size then trimmed to fit the lagoon card base. I stamped pear on pear with the print from Universal backgrounds.  Some pear epoxy bubbles in the middle of the flowers and scatter bitty pearls finish it up.

 

 

Baby Steps

Just a little card.

Cappaccino Cheesecake Pie

Another recipe card, with some blue scrap paper, Huntington, bamboo cardstock, antiqued gold embellishment, rosette ribbon.  It's such a pretty way to keep your favorite recipes.   I punch a whole in the top left corner of mine, and keep them on a giant round ring.

 

Convention 2013 Layout

Convention is this great place consultants get to go and have fun.  At then end, they gave us a special kit, with papers and a stamp set which matched the convention things, from our name tags to the color of the hotel.  This is my fellow consultant Christy and I scrapping and having fun at the Mardi gras and 80's parties.  That's the new font in the Artbooking cartridge I used to cut Convention 2013.

Color Dare #55

Another composition book covered, this time in Laughing Lola.  Post your own entry at Color My Heart!

Laughing Lola paper pack - X7170B
Purple gems from Laughing Lola card kit - G1064
Sparkles black flourishes - Z1745
Green & Blue epoxy bubbles - Z1806
Black shimmer trim - Z1809
Stardust glitter glitz - Z1313
Frosted assortment - Z1890
Base & Bling word accents - Z1882
Eek & Shriek stamp set - B1429

Another Babycakes layout

Not thrilled with the stamp set that comes with a paper pack, but love the instructions?  Order the Make It from Your Heart Volume 2 (9042, $7.95)!  While they have different papers in the book, each kit's layout can be found in the book.  That's exactly what I did for the Babycakes layout.

The pictures of the layout showed the buttercup yellow paper used in this layout - but the flip side is those adorable giraffes!  So I rummaged through my older kits and used the yellow paper from the Chantilly kit.  Again, nothing on these pages that demands you use baby pictures, but great if you do!

Not just for babies

On yesterday's post I did a layout with Babycakes that wasn't baby related.  The 'Great' comes from page 66 of the Artbooking cartridge, 11" title.  I cut the 'outdoors' part off. 

Naptime then became A Great Time - a perfect title for many things.

Negative Space

So... Babycakes is not one of the kits I'm featuring at a crop.  So I started playing with the paper pack that I have.  My 'baby' is 15, but I'm expecting my first nephew in December.  So whether these pages stay in my no-photo's album until I get that first grandchild, or if they are pictures of my daughter and nephew I'm covered with this great paper.

I also tried out the new Artbooking cartridge.  It's taking me a little while to get used to it and see what I can use from the pages.  One of the great consultants at convention mentioned using the reverse spaces of background cuts, and I tried it out.

Frist I cut the lattice background from page 50 of the book - (no shift).  The items on this page are designed to perfectly fit a 8X6 mini album, but I work in 12X12's.  So I set my Cricut for 11" and got this:

I was left with these negative spaces still on my Cricut mat.

From my test run with white paper, I had noticed a triangle pattern when cleaning it off, so I removed some of the brown squares to get this:

I used glossy accents on the squares and triangles for one corner:

and then placed my colonial white paper over, pressed down and then waited about 10 minutes for it to set well.   Then I picked by cardstock up slowly and most of the squares stuck to the paper.

For the ones that didn't I just peeled them off the mat and glued them back down.  The newer your mat, the more this might happen.

In the end, I have two pretty cool bases for a double spread.

After I finished I had this:

I can't decide if I like the negative space even better than the main cut!

White paper

When I buy a new album, the covers come with a very thin piece of white paper in them.  It's not good enough quality to actually use in my scrapbooks.  I hang onto the piece and use them to test cut items on the Cricut or for those first few images of a new stamp.  They are also great as place holders for pages you don't have the perfect pictures for just yet.   I marked the size I will need to cut my photos in order to fit the mats or spaces.

This is Babycakes paper pack with the matching canvas sticker set.  Canvas stickers are really cool and add some nice texture to the pages.  The lattice work at the bottom of the second page is from the Artbooking cartridge, page 50, 11".

Color Dare #54

I chose Pacifica as my additional color in the Color My Heart Dare.  The paper is Champagne, the background stamp from Geometric Backgrounds (D1559) in Cashmere.  I spritzed on some Pacifica/alcohol mix in a spray pen (Z1380) after stamping the background. I wrapped it in natural hemp (Z280) before adhering the birds with 3D foam tape (Z1151) .  The blue birds are cut in Pacifica cardstock from the Artbooking cartridge, page 59 (real dial size 1 3/4"), distressed with Cashmere and shined up with Stardust Glitz (Z1313). The small buttons are from the Wooden embellishment collection (Z1837).  The sentiment, one of my favorites, is from All the Details (D1555).

Giraffe Box

How cute is this?  One of our lovely scrappers is headed to another city and to an exciting new job.  We will miss her.  As a going away gift I made her some change of address cards, and put them in gift box I cut from the Artiste cartridge.  (She loves giraffe's!)  As a note to anyone else trying this cute box, the booklet says max of 6.5", but I found you could only cut the top at a maximum of 5.75".
The box is stamped using the Wild Wonders stamp set (giraffe is an auto cut from the Artbooking cartridge, don't forget to set it on real size) and the cards were stamped from a prior SOTM, using black pigment ink and embossing powders.  The bottom just slides into the wrap around top. 

Frames

Join me on Thursday, August 15, 5:30pm - 7:30pm for a card workshop.  Three cards for $3.   I worked with frames this time, and the Buzz and Bumble paper pack. Hope to see you then!