Spooky Banner

Hello All!  Just a quick post to show you what I've been up to lately.  My dear friend, Laura, and I spent yesterday creating this SPOOKY banner by using the CTMH new Cricut cartridge, Art Philosophy.  I cannot say enough good about this cartridge!!   I have to add that this banner was inspired by Andrea Sherman.  Thanks Andrea!  If anyone wants directions, please leave me a comment and I'll provide them.

As I said, the new CTMH Art Philosophy cartridge for the Cricut is phenomenal!  Not only does it have 700 images but multiply that by any size you can think of, up to 23.5" if you own a Cricut Expression or Imagine.  The cartridge also includes a fantastic font and a font layer!  It also has 3-D items like boxes, bags, envelopes, etc.
 
This Cricut Art Philosophy Collection is chock full of items to make incredible art, cards and scrapbook layouts!  In addition to the cartridge itself, you will receive 3 D-size My Acrylix stamp sets and 3 sets of Dimensional Elements that all coordinate with the Art Philosophy cartridge.  The price for this is $99 US.  To get this bundle for yourself so you can start creating, hop over to my website, JustHatchinIdeas  If you have any questions about this or any other Close to My Heart products, post a comment and I'd love to hear from you!  Happy Crafting!

Gratitude

So Friday was such fun with Laura, Debbie, Trina and Journey at Deb's house.  Her scrap area is to die for and we laughed and created and it was SO GOOD to get together!  Our friend, Elaine, no longer lives near us and is out of state, so we each created a birthday card for her!  It's going to be such fun for her to open the box and find all the different cards we made just in honor of her and her birthday!  Loved it!  The only sad thing...I FORGOT to take a picture of it before I sent it!  Whoops!  I'm slipping!  That night I also started my cover for my gratitude journal.  Once I get the cover done I'll take a pic of that so you can see.  I've been feeling like I need to show more gratitude for the good things in my life and for the lessons I'm learning from the hard things.  Debbie and Laura's gratitude journals are the one that Teresa Collins designed.  It's the same idea, write one thing, just one thing each day of something for which I am grateful.  I will start recording these on June 1st and the whole process covers one year. It will not only include my entries, but also photos or memorabilia that I collect along the way.  I am SO excited for it!  Yesterday I got the skeleton of the book put together and today put the pages all together.  I also plan on making some of my own embellishments with chipboard, stamping, shrinky dinks, ribbon and the like.  I'm hoping to offer this as a project class in July.  Guess what tool I brought out yesterday that I haven't used since I got it eons ago?  My light box!  Oh, that baby is so great for making sure things are lined up!  What tool have you recently (re)discovered?  My family laughed that I got so excited but it just made my task sooooo much easier!

New Layout-Love These People! My family!

This layout was made using the Lucky paper and chipboard accents.  It flew together pretty easily.  Oh, and I used some stamps from the You & Me kit too!  The title was done with the Cricut.

Father's Day Cards

I made these cards for my dad and my father-in-law for Father's Day. I want them to arrive early and since they have to go out of state I figured that today was a good day to mail them. The truck card is made with the the CTMH Beary Busy My Acrylix stamp set and the Beary Best stamp set. I used Chocolate cardstock and the Creative Basics Cherry-O collection plaid paper. I also used Sorbet Exclusive Inks stamp pad and Chocolate Exclusive Inks for coloring. I used my sewing machine to stitch around the borders of everything. I used Sorbet ink and Colonial White Exclusive Inks stamp pad to ink the edges. I used some linen thread on the fold to tie a bow. I don't know where I got that. But I'm sure that you could also use some floss if you wanted to.

The Dad card also used the Creative Basics Cherry-O collection plaid paper. My card base was made using Sweet Leaf cardstock and Crystal Blue cardstock. I used the Beary Best My Acrylix stamp set for that super cute fisherbear on the lower corner. My dad LOVES to fish so this set was a must have! I stitched borders with a deep tan color. I got the arrows and brads from the Mini-Medleys Antiqued Copper Collection. I used the paper piercer to make my hole before putting the brad through. I stamped dad with the Chocolate Alphabet Large in Sweet Leaf ink and tied each letter with a strand of Chocolate Floss. And I used the Blender Pen to color the fisherbear.

I really enjoyed doing a couple of masculine cards for a change. Now I am off to create a surprise one for my husband for Father's Day! Have fun making a Father's Day card for the men in your life! Show them you care with a handmade card or gift. They will love it!

Seize the Day

A few weeks ago I really needed something to get my creative mojo going. I went to spend the day with my friend, Debbie and we did a bit of "tandem scrapping". What that is, is that we had the same pics and same paper, etc, so we both worked on the layout together. It had been a long time since we had done that but we had these pictures and just had to preserve our memories of our fun in March when we took the opportunity to seize the day! We used the Cherry-O Workshops On The Go, which included the Tulip Mini Medleys, Chocolate Waxy Flax and a guide to give you layout ideas. We didn't use the idea but just kind of went our own direction. The background is Cocoa. I used the Chocolate Large stamp set. I LOVE that set! It is so pretty and can go with so many layouts! To finish it off I printed my journaling on a clear transparency and adhered it with spray adhesive. I felt charged up and can say that I'm finally scrapping again!!

The Big 75!

Today is my dad's 75th birthday! And in honor of that I am posting a picture of the card that I made for him. I will try and see if I can add some detail pictures too, but for now here it is. I used the March Stamp of the Month set, called A Little Everything. And the Remember This stamp set also from Close to my Heart. The colors I used are Vineyard Berry, Indian Corn Blue and Garden Green. Oh, and also Colonial White for the top and also the color of the brads. I used some Liquid Glass to accent the month and day. I used the Martha Stewart scoring board for the Indian Corn Blue pattern. It was easy to do using the envelope piece on the board. Nice angle for the lattice effect. I used some metallic embroidery floss by DMC. Neat stuff to work with. Even with the hand stitching.