Friday, February 5, 2010
Did you know?
Did you know that you can order Close to my Heart online? Did you know that your products could be shipped right to your house? Did you know that this month only, you can buy 12" by 12" textured cardstock packs for $14.95 and GET ONE PACK FREE! That averages out to about 30 cents a paper, that's a bargain! Even better, Close to my Heart is giving $2.00 of that money to help Operation Smile work in Haiti. And that's not all, there's no limit, you can buy as many as you like and get one free for every pack you buy! I was doing the math and figured I could actually buy 7 sets of paper, get 7 for free AND get the stamp of the month for free too! The total cost before shipping and tax? Just $104.65, value of free products? $127.60! What? You get more in free products than your (pre-tax and shipping) cost, pretty good! My website is http://barbraotten.myctmh.com/. Don't let this special get away from you, February is the shortest month!!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
My Newsletter
I have a newsletter that I send out by email 1-2 times a month. I normally put in a tutorial you can't see here on my blog PLUS I have specials that are only available through my newsletter. If you are interested in taking advantage of those you need to be subscribed. Your email address is not sold, traded, or given to anyone else, I promise! Come join the fun and sign up today!
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
How to use up paper scraps
At a crop a couple of weeks ago I wanted to make several cards to send as thank you's to my wonderful hostesses. I had just a little bit of paper left from my only set of Caboodle paper (I have three more packs on the way, thank goodness) and I didn't want the scraps to go to waste. I found a card pattern that would really take advantage of long thing strips of paper and set about to make almost 30 cards. The background is the same for every card:
One vanilla cream card base cut 5 1/2" by 8 1/2", folded in half
One piece of cardstock for the card front cut 5 1/2" by 4 1/4" cut from either sweet leaf, crystal blue, buttercup, vanilla cream or sorbet cardstock, whatever you have.
One strip of pattern paper 1 1/2" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1/2" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1 3/4" by 1" cut from any of the colors mentioned above
Remember you are using your scraps up so as long as they are all from the same paper set you don't even have to think about them matching, they just automatically do. You can round two corners of the 1 3/4" by 1" piece as shown and stamped with any sentiment you like. The card front looks great with some dry embossed lines sanded or inked so feel free to do that. Glue the largest strip on the bottom, flush with the edge, the skinniest strip above it and the 1" strip above that, all lined up against each other. Now, with that basic pattern you can just go ahead and decorate any way you want. I mostly used the Gratitude stamp set but any will do. You can see that some of these are incredibly basic but still look pretty. Don't forget to put on all embellishments before attaching to card base.
One vanilla cream card base cut 5 1/2" by 8 1/2", folded in half
One piece of cardstock for the card front cut 5 1/2" by 4 1/4" cut from either sweet leaf, crystal blue, buttercup, vanilla cream or sorbet cardstock, whatever you have.
One strip of pattern paper 1 1/2" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1/2" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1" by 5 1/2"
One strip of pattern paper 1 3/4" by 1" cut from any of the colors mentioned above
Remember you are using your scraps up so as long as they are all from the same paper set you don't even have to think about them matching, they just automatically do. You can round two corners of the 1 3/4" by 1" piece as shown and stamped with any sentiment you like. The card front looks great with some dry embossed lines sanded or inked so feel free to do that. Glue the largest strip on the bottom, flush with the edge, the skinniest strip above it and the 1" strip above that, all lined up against each other. Now, with that basic pattern you can just go ahead and decorate any way you want. I mostly used the Gratitude stamp set but any will do. You can see that some of these are incredibly basic but still look pretty. Don't forget to put on all embellishments before attaching to card base.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
February Stamp of the Month Blog Hop
Why do the months fly by so much faster than they did when we were kids? It's blog hop time again! I hope you put us on your internet travels today. You can "hop" from blog to blog and see how the most talented Close to my Heart consultants turn a piece of plastic into a work of art! If you've arrived here from Deb's Blog, you're on the right track.
You're going to love this new Piece of Cake stamp set, it's just the right stamp set to have on hand for birthday, wedding and anniversary cards. I decided to make a postcard for my entry into the hop. I bought these ruffled edge postcards a few months back and just fell in love with them. The first thing you will want to do (if you like the look) is to distress with your sponge tool and some sorbet ink.
Caboodle is my new favorite paper kit. The colors just brighten my day. The colors are buttercup, sorbet, crystal blue and sweet leaf. They couldn't be better for a birthday card. Cut one of the pattern papers from this set 5" by 3 3/4" and round the edges with a corner rounder. Distress with the sorbet ink too.
My friend, Holly, has been asking me to make more complicated card so I thought I'd use a tile-like background for the sentiment from the stamp set. I had a punch that punches squares just under 1/2" by 1/2". Punch out about 25-30 using all four cardstock colors.
It helps to line up your squares if you don't force them into a pre-cut piece of paper. I put mine on an extra large piece of colonial white cardstock so I could trim to fit later. Distress and add your squares making sure to really vary them so there's no real pattern (or make a pattern, it's your card)!
Use a scallop punch if you have one that runs about 1 1/4" in diameter. To make it a little more fancy use a 1/16th inch hole punch to make it look like eyelet lace. Distress with sorbet.
Trim your large square to fit the small ones.
Cut a strip of the crystal blue cardstock 1/2" by 5", distress and glue it to the bottom of the pattern paper about 1/4" up from bottom.
If you have Magic Mesh, use a sorbet color and attach down 1" from right edge of the card. Cut it to only fit the pattern paper, not go up over the ruffled card front. Mat your "squares" piece with a 2 1/4" by 2 1/4" (or thereabouts) piece of sweet leaf cardstock.
Stamp the tallest cake on the stamp set in sorbet ink on some colonial white cardstock.
Color it in using a blender pen and the ink from the four different colors in the set. Remember to not go over and over the paper or it will get wet and ruin your look, use a light touch.
If you like you can use a piece of magic mesh to add texture to a piece of sweet leaf cardstock before attaching the cake. Just lay the mesh down and use your sponge tool and some crystal blue ink to make an interesting background. The cardstock should measure 3 1/2" by 1 3/4" and you can round the corners and distress.
Cut out the cake and glue to green piece, attach to right hand side of card 1/4" to the right of the "squares" piece.
If you have a larger scallop punch, use it to cut out some sorbet cardstock. If you don't have punches use a circle cutter. Glue Make a Wish circle to the center and attach both to the center of your "squares." Add a Close to my Heart window charm to the center and you're done. Have fun at the hop and check out Jamia Bankhead's Blog next. If you get lost on the hop, check out the list here.
You're going to love this new Piece of Cake stamp set, it's just the right stamp set to have on hand for birthday, wedding and anniversary cards. I decided to make a postcard for my entry into the hop. I bought these ruffled edge postcards a few months back and just fell in love with them. The first thing you will want to do (if you like the look) is to distress with your sponge tool and some sorbet ink.
Caboodle is my new favorite paper kit. The colors just brighten my day. The colors are buttercup, sorbet, crystal blue and sweet leaf. They couldn't be better for a birthday card. Cut one of the pattern papers from this set 5" by 3 3/4" and round the edges with a corner rounder. Distress with the sorbet ink too.
My friend, Holly, has been asking me to make more complicated card so I thought I'd use a tile-like background for the sentiment from the stamp set. I had a punch that punches squares just under 1/2" by 1/2". Punch out about 25-30 using all four cardstock colors.
It helps to line up your squares if you don't force them into a pre-cut piece of paper. I put mine on an extra large piece of colonial white cardstock so I could trim to fit later. Distress and add your squares making sure to really vary them so there's no real pattern (or make a pattern, it's your card)!
Use a scallop punch if you have one that runs about 1 1/4" in diameter. To make it a little more fancy use a 1/16th inch hole punch to make it look like eyelet lace. Distress with sorbet.
Trim your large square to fit the small ones.
Cut a strip of the crystal blue cardstock 1/2" by 5", distress and glue it to the bottom of the pattern paper about 1/4" up from bottom.
If you have Magic Mesh, use a sorbet color and attach down 1" from right edge of the card. Cut it to only fit the pattern paper, not go up over the ruffled card front. Mat your "squares" piece with a 2 1/4" by 2 1/4" (or thereabouts) piece of sweet leaf cardstock.
Stamp the tallest cake on the stamp set in sorbet ink on some colonial white cardstock.
Color it in using a blender pen and the ink from the four different colors in the set. Remember to not go over and over the paper or it will get wet and ruin your look, use a light touch.
If you like you can use a piece of magic mesh to add texture to a piece of sweet leaf cardstock before attaching the cake. Just lay the mesh down and use your sponge tool and some crystal blue ink to make an interesting background. The cardstock should measure 3 1/2" by 1 3/4" and you can round the corners and distress.
Cut out the cake and glue to green piece, attach to right hand side of card 1/4" to the right of the "squares" piece.
If you have a larger scallop punch, use it to cut out some sorbet cardstock. If you don't have punches use a circle cutter. Glue Make a Wish circle to the center and attach both to the center of your "squares." Add a Close to my Heart window charm to the center and you're done. Have fun at the hop and check out Jamia Bankhead's Blog next. If you get lost on the hop, check out the list here.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
New Layouts!
Over this past weekend I attended a great crop in Shipshewana, Indiana that my friend, Linda Hicks, threw for us. We had a wonderful time in an excellent hotel and it was so fun to step into the Amish community too. I made 28 cards and these layouts. The cards I'll show tomorrow but here are some pages I did with pictures from our recent trip to Los Angeles this past July. None of them are using Close to my Heart paper as I'm trying to really use up my stock of other papers so I can really concentrate on just using my (very large) stock of Close to my Heart supplies.
My kids loved Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, a place where my husband went frequently when he was young. The boys are "inside" an aquarium which is why the pictures look obscured.
Before checking out the aquarium there, we had a picnic outside. My mother in law brought all the food. They were so happy to visit with their grandchildren whom they hadn't seen in a couple of years.
My husband is big on beach time and we spent one morning there but it didn't go well, there were black flies everywhere and my son had to sort of be rescued by a lifeguard.
At the Cabrillo Beach aquarium they had costumes depicting sea creatures and my boys loved trying them on with their cousins.
My favorite singer, Daryl Hall, recommended Irv's Burgers in L.A. on his show, Live from Daryl's House and so I had to check it out. It was wonderful, the lady who owned the outside diner was more than happy to tell me about Hall and Oates visiting there often. She actually writes little notes on the paper plates your hamburger and fries come on for each customer and they are all personalized! Hope you enjoy a sneak peek into some of my pages.
My kids loved Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro, a place where my husband went frequently when he was young. The boys are "inside" an aquarium which is why the pictures look obscured.
Before checking out the aquarium there, we had a picnic outside. My mother in law brought all the food. They were so happy to visit with their grandchildren whom they hadn't seen in a couple of years.
My husband is big on beach time and we spent one morning there but it didn't go well, there were black flies everywhere and my son had to sort of be rescued by a lifeguard.
At the Cabrillo Beach aquarium they had costumes depicting sea creatures and my boys loved trying them on with their cousins.
My favorite singer, Daryl Hall, recommended Irv's Burgers in L.A. on his show, Live from Daryl's House and so I had to check it out. It was wonderful, the lady who owned the outside diner was more than happy to tell me about Hall and Oates visiting there often. She actually writes little notes on the paper plates your hamburger and fries come on for each customer and they are all personalized! Hope you enjoy a sneak peek into some of my pages.
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