Borders and More

The Close to my Heart Stamp of the Month for August is a lovely borders and greetings set called Framed.

 For this card, I used one of the frames, stamped on white then cut out and layered on black. The greeting is part of the same set and I stamped it in Pixie to tone with the lovely papers from the Taste of Summer collection. The strawberries were stamps from the Taste of Summer stamp set. Finished it off with washi tape at the top.

 This Father's Day card is a simple but effective one using another of the frame stamps and the Father's Day greeting.

The papers are from the Jackson paper pack, a retired collection from CTMH.

The final card is again using paper from the Jackson collection and the greeting was stamped inside the frame. I cut the frame out after stamping it then layered on black to make it stand out.

This stamp set (Framed) is available throughout August from my web shop.

Travel Journal

Kathy Orta at Paper Phenomenon designed this wonderful Travel Journal. You can purchase the tutorial by clicking on the link.

I made the journal using the Close to my Heart Wanderful collection. Sadly, this collection is being phased out and will no longer be available in the catalogue. However, I do still have a few papers in my stash to use for other travel projects!

The base of the folder is made from Kraft Tex, an amazing paper/fabric that seems to be indestructible and is so easy to work with. Instead of glueing the paper to the Kraft Tex, Kathy suggested using fabric bonding material like you would use for doing appliqué work. It worked fabulously and I am so pleased with the end product. It will be interesting to see how it stands up to use!

The front of the journal showing the elastic closure with a stamped image from the Reel Life stamp set (CTMH) which is still available in the 2015-16 catalogue. 

Inside of the front cover showing the pocket on the left and the cover of the first notebook.

Inside the back cover.

Happy Anniversary

Last week my son and daughter-in-law celebrated their wedding anniversary.

I thought I would have a go at using the Regal font to make a canvas for them 

I used Design Space to split the capital B and added the name in the centre. Their names and the date of their wedding were added below the split letter.

I cut it out in white vinyl and applied it to a canvas (8"x10") that I had painted black.

Cricut Pop-up Cards

Recently, I have been making some Pop-Up cards using the Cricut Explore.

Pop-up cards are easy with the Cricut as the pop-up mechanism is built into the actual card and all you have to do is select the card, cut out the elements of the card and stick it all together.

With the simple pop-up cards in the Cricut Subscription on Design Space, you only get the inside of the card, so you also need to think about the front of the card. I used some label cutouts, embossing folder, flowers, vines and words to decorate the fronts of the cards. 

Enjoy!

Taste of Summer

This month at Close to My Heart, the Constant Campaign is for a pack of beautiful summery papers, all double sided and 2 of each design, Taste of Summer.






There is also a cute set of stamps that coordinate with the paper pack, making it a great resource for keeping summer memories in a scrapbook page or making a special summery card.







I decided to make a mini album using the paper pack - and I still had 4 sheets left after making the album so I will be doing some cards with those ones!


I have made a short video showing my latest creation using these colourful papers.

Enjoy and do let me know if you want some of these lovely papers or the stamp set before the end of May. 

Remembering

Over the last few weeks, we have, in New Zealand, been remembering the landing of New Zealand and Australian troops on the beach at Gallipoli in Turkey on 25th April, 1915. This was a disastrous military undertaking and thousands of soldiers were killed over a period of months.

I made this set of poppies and the frame to remind us of the sacrifice made by so many.

The poppies were cut using the Cricut Explore and the Giant 3D flowers cartridge. I cut the words from black vinyl and attached them to the glass front of a photo frame that I repurposed by sanding down, painting with black acrylic then rubbed with antiqueing wax.

Making Cards Again!

Given that Mother's Day is coming up pretty fast - this weekend, in fact, I had a burst of card making over the last week or so. I am using the Cricut Design Space program that is an on-line program for use with the newish Cricut Explore.

Some of these cards were made using the Artfully Sent Cartridge from Close to my Heart. I am really enjoying having this cartridge and the Cricut Explore makes it very easy to make these stunningly simple cards.

This card was made using the Design Space software. I love the crisp, clean cuts from this machine.

This gatefold type card was made using Design Space and a mixture of files available in the program.

I split the fence cutting file and attached it to a rectangle to make it fold into the centre. 













This card was a download from Monica's Creations. One of the beautiful four-fold cards available to download from the website, it is very elegant. I added a belly-band to keep it closed and cut the word and shadow with the Cricut.

This is a card I made from left-over card using Close to my Heart products. The stamp was the Stamp of the Month for April and is so versatile as there are about 16 different sentiments to stamp onto the typewriter image. The dotty card is Confetti Wishes with Lagoon cardstock layered on top of it.

The last one for today was a box card I made using an svg file from SVG Cuts - Box cards set. I used Confetti Wishes and Lagoon cardstock from CTMH along with flower stamps (Pretty Petals). I used CTMH Exclusive inks to stamp the flowers in Thistle, Lagoon, Pear, Smoothie and Honey. I was able to cut the flower shapes out with the Cricut using the Art Philosophy cartridge from CTMH and the Artfully Sent cartridge for the label on the front.





Wow, a long post today. Really enjoyed playing with these cards and the new inks and stamps from CTMH.