Sparkle & Shine

Made both of these cards with the Sparkle & Shine paper pack.  I wanted to make something with it that wasn't Christmassy so I did the birthday card for a good friend.  Then I had a few Poinsettia cuts and the sentiment stamped in my scraps so I decided to make a Christmas card as well. 

I had a hard time figuring out how to make the birthday card a little bit feminine (and not Christmassy) with the colors in the pack so I decided to replace the Ruby with Hollyhock and I love the combo.  I used two of the washi tapes from the holiday catalog and some bling.  The ribbon is the color ready seam binding ribbon colored with blush and hollyhock.

My next challenge was making the bird on the Christmas card stand out so I took a page from fellow consultant and friend Donna Davis's scrapbook and made it a completely different color from the rest of the card.  More washi tape and a little zip strip from the paper pack and a few glitter gems.  The centers of the poinsettias are cut out circles from a zip strip.

Happy Holidays to all!

Being Thankful

It's that time of year when thoughts turn to what you're thankful for.  I'm thankful for a husband that understands when I want to spend our Saturday together Skype scrapping with my friends across the country; for two wonderfully independent and loving kids; for a family that loves to spend time together; for friends who understand when I need to stop Skype scrapping to go out to dinner with my husband.   Love all of my family and friends that keep me going and make every day a great one.

Three Amigos Blog Hop November!

Welcome back to the Three Amigos CTMH Mini-Blog Hop. We are three Close to My Heart Consultants with a love for Stamping and Scrapping and would like to share our creative ideas with you. Each month we are featuring a different CTMH product and create a card, layout or other project. There are only 3 stops on this hop so it will only take a few minutes to hop through.

For November our mission was to use product(s) from the Holidays From The Heart mini catalog.

I've been working so much lately on Christmas cards that I wanted to do something non-Christmas!  While there are a lot of holiday themed items in the catalog there are quite a few products that can be used for any kind of card or layout.   This layout is for a mini book I'm creating about my road trip from Buffalo to Phoenix with my  dad and mybrother's family to move them out here.  The products I used from the new catalog were both stamp sets.  The number "1" for Day 1 of our trip is from the Magical Days stamp set (you can earn free with $100 in purchases!).  Although at first glance this is a holiday stamp set, many of the numbers on the set can be used on non-holiday projects (which my good friends and fellow hoppers Susan and Donna pointed out).  I forget sometimes to look past the obvious.  I wasn't going to get this one and when they gave me that lightbulb moment I knew right away I'd want to use it for this mini book.  The other stamp set I used was Charming Chevrons (also from the holiday catalog) on the left hand side as an embellishment to my journaling page.

All my pages and most of my paper embellishments were cut from the new Artbooking cartridge.  Love that cartridge and it was so easy to cut the pages and embellishments in proper proportions.  I made an 8x8 album so I turned off my real dial size and cut everything at 8" and all the pieces were cut to fit an 8x8 album.  The best part was each of my nieces and nephew chose a paper pack and we cut pages and embellishments for them and they each made their own books.  I'll be featuring all the pages from all of our books later this month.  In the meantime; here is a peek.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Now hop over to Donna's Diary of a Scrapbook Addict Blog and see what she has created to share with you!