March Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to the March Stamp of the Month Blog Hop. If you've arrived from Sheila Bennett's blog, you're in the right place! This month's stamp is A Little Everything and it sure is. What a great stamp set, it would be so perfect if you were to make a card organizer or just for creating a bunch of cards for the year. This will definitely be one of your most used stamp sets. For this card I thought I'd do a version with distressing and one without so you could see the difference. It's a very easy card that will only take you about 10 minutes to make. You need Moonstruck, Topiary, Sweet Leaf and Sunny Yellow cardstock along with White Daisy textured cardstock. Cut your white cardstock 5 1/2" by 4 1/4" and the strips of colored cardstock 3/4" by 5 1/2".

Glue the strips about a 1/4" apart from the sides and each other. It's hard to get them exact but perfection is highly overrated.

The pictures I took for this didn't all turn out so I will be condensing instructions. Take the big "Thanks" stamp and stamp it on a piece of white paper with Moonstruck ink. Cut around the word so that there is an even amount of white space around each side. Eyeball it!

Stamp "for all you do" in Moonstruck ink on the lower right strip of cardstock. Find some Moonstruck colored sheer ribbon and ricrac and attach both down to the left hand side of the card about 1/2" in from the left. Easy, right? Here's the undistressed version.

On the top is undistressed, bottom is distressed. You decide which type suits you and I'd love to hear your opinion! Now, you should be off to see the wonderful blog from Susan Brooks!

Click here if you get lost. Blog Hop List

In Memoriam - T-bone Wolk

1951-2010

March Stamp of the Month hop list

Jena DeVries
Helen Onulak
Michelle Nist
Carol Loftus
Antoinette Herrin
Shannon Pelletier
Lori Miller
Kami Welter
Angela Tutton
Annette Green
Haley Dyer
Melissa Burch
Michelle Loncar
Adeline E. Brill
Wanda Riley
Debra Van Patten
Jamia Bankhead
Nancy Brown
Dawn Heuft
Shirley Ross
Jenifer Benner
Sarita Schraeder
Deb Young
Carla Ironside
Jen Patrick
Sheila Bennett
Barbra Otten
Susan Brooks
Laurie Levnik
Beth Naumann
Tanya David
Brae Montgomery
Melissa Laverty
Karen Norman
Katy Donaldson
Latisha Haag
Danielle Chapman
Georgia Hauglid
Brenda Harmless
Tammy Lea Pinchard
Traci Godbee
Lori Brown
Laurie Newton
Misty Jackson
Jody Gustafson
Dawn Ross
Terrie Dodd
Laura Dame
Kristie Herdener
Carol Horton
Lori Leng
Chris Shouse
Jill Lucas
Jen Rubio
Kathleen Androlewicz
Sylvia Jacquot
Amy Edwards
Amy McVey
Jessica Booth
Kim O'Rear
Mary Eisen
Judy Berger
Cindy Leek
Cibele Glazer
Pamela O'Connor
Alison Mullen
Caren Goldsein
Shannon Buck

New Card Box - Part Three

Sorry about the photo quality on some of these, here are the inside dividers for the card box. Cut your colonial white cardstock five inches by six inches. Cut pattern paper from the Topstitch set 4 inches by 6 inches. Glue the pattern paper to the white paper as shown and then distress with your chocolate ink.

I wanted to make this box with dividers for birthday cards that I could pre-address then send out as the months progressed so I made the dividers labeled with the months instead of with categories of cards.

Cut twelve 1 1/2" circles out of colonial white cardstock and distress the edges with chocolate ink. Using the Save the Date stamp set, stamp the months on the top of in vineyard berry ink. Stamp the butterfly from the Friendship's Flight stamp set in Heavenly Blue and then in vineyard berry for the outline.

Glue January, April, August, and November on the left side of the cards, letting the bottom edge of the circle touch the top of the pattern paper. Glue February, May, September, and December in the center of the cards and March, June and October on the right hand side. This will make them easier to flip through.

Here's how they should look when you are finished.

I liked the whole distressed, country feeling of this paper so I used twine to decorate the handle. I used a little Tombow glue on the center two inches of the handle. Fold a very long piece of twine in half and wrap the center of the twine around the center of the handle. Wind the right half of the twine out to the right and the left half of the twine to the left then cross them over and tie in the middle. That's all there is to it, hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

New Card Box - Part Two

I can't tell you how nice it is to have my greeting cards organized in several pretty card boxes like this one. Whenever I need to pull out a birthday card or I hear of someone not feeling well, I'm totally prepared and know right where I'll find the right homemade card. Yesterday I showed you how to make the front of this box, today we'll make the sides and back. For the sides you'll need to make this piece twice, here's the measurements for each one:

4 1/4" by 6 1/4" chocolate cardstock
4" by 6" pattern paper
2" by 6" pattern paper
1" by 6" blush pink cardstock
1/2" by 6" chocolate cardstock
Two 2" by 2" colonial white cardstock
Two 2 1/4" by 2 1/4" chocolate cardstock

Attach the largest piece of pattern paper to the large piece of chocolate cardstock. Take the 2" by 6" and glue about 1/4" from the top of the piece. Flush with that piece attach the pink strip.

Stamp butterlies from the Friendship's Flight stamp set that we used yesterday in blush pink then the outline with vineyard berry on the colonial white squares. Mount them on the chocolate cardstock and then about a 1/2" apart from the sides and each other, 1/4" up on the pink strip.

Add skinny chocolate cardstock strip 1/4" up from bottom of sidepiece.

Poke holes and add five blush pink brads about an inch from each other along the chocolate strip then attach to the side of the box with Tombow and glue dots. Make sure to do this for each side.

For the back, cut:

6 1/4" by 4 1/4" chocolate cardstock
6" by 4" pattern paper
6" by 2" pattern paper
5" by 3" pattern paper

Attach the 4" by 6" pattern paper to the chocolate cardstock. Put the 3" by 5" piece in the center of that. Then add the 2" by 6" strip across the center of the whole piece. Take buttons or chipboard circle buttons and thread them with white floss. Attach all of them across in a line on the middle strip of paper. Use Tombow and glue dots to attach the whole piece to the back. On Monday, we'll work on the inside divider cards.

New Card Box - Part One

I'm applying to be a teacher at the Close to my Heart convention in July and have to submit five projects. I had four already but needed the fifth so I whipped up this cardbox. It's created with a My Acrylix Organizer box that normally holds our stamp sets. I wanted to try our new Topstitch paper for this box, so pretty, with pinks and blues. Today I'll be showing you how to make the front.

Cut your paper as follows:

4 1/4" by 6 1/4" chocolate cardstock
4" by 6" pattern paper
2" by 6" pattern paper
2 1/2" colonial white cardstock circle
2 3/4" chocolate cardstock circle
3" by 1" colonial white cardstock
3 1/4" by 1 1/4" blush pink cardstock

You'll also need some scrap colonial white cardstock for stamping too. Distress everything with chocolate ink.

Glue the large pattern paper to the chocolate background cardstock. About a 1/2" down from top, glue the 2" by 6" pattern paper.

Stamp the word or name of your choice on the long colonial white cardstock piece with vineyard berry ink and the Precious Alphabet set then glue it to the blush pink cardstock.

Stamp the large flower from the Endless Friendship stamp set in heavenly blue ink on the colonial white cardstock circle then stamp two more flowers. Glue the white circle to the chocolate circle.


Cut out the other two flowers and layer them on the flower you stamped on the circle so the flower looks very full.

Stamp the circle on the stamp set in the center of the flower in blush pink then the little star stamp inside of that in vineyard berry. Glue the whole thing about a 1/2 inch from the left and bottom of the front piece. Attach your name or title piece 1/4" up from the bottom, 1/2" from the right hand side, letting it overlap as shown.

Stamp the other large flower on the Endless Friendship set into the blush pink and roll the edges in the vineyard berry three times.

Stamp the centers in vineyard berry, (both the center and the star). Cut them out and glue on as shown. I also added a small butterfly from the Friendship's Flight in heavenly blue and vineyard berry which you may do if you have that set.

Now add window charms to the centers of all your flowers and attach the whole thing with Tombow glue and glue dots to the front of your box. You want it to really stick well so don't be stingy with the glue. Tomorrow I'll show you how to make the sides.

Hi Everyone!

Whew, aren't those Olympics great? I've become a big fan of Apolo Ono and Shaun White, how about you? I've been watching while making a new version of my card holder box. I'll post that tomorrow, still finishing the inside.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Our family has a tradition every Fat Tuesday where we go out and get Paczkis. We love these overstuffed jelly donuts and are happy they are only available once a year!! We all got up early this morning to go to our favorite bakery, Sandra Kay's. Hope you all have a great Fat Tuesday!

Simple brayer technique - new card!

Happy Valentine's Day! I was just working with my brayer today, I haven't yet mastered all the great techniques you can do with it but this is an easy one to try. I used Star Spangled Blue and Black inks for this particular card.

Cut some white daisy paper 4 3/4" by 4 3/4". You then need some scrap paper to tear and put it at the bottom of your card to mask the white from the blue ink.

Now roll your ink on the ink pad and then onto your paper until it's as dark as you want it. Be careful not to move your torn paper until you're finished.

I made mine nice and dark but you can go lighter.

Using the Childhood Portrait stamp set, stamp the tree in black to the right of your picture.

Stamp one of the shadowy stamps on the left hand side, there are a lot to choose from.

Trim if you like so that the focus is on the stamped image.

Glue the white paper on a matching black mat. Mine was 5" by 5". Attach that piece to a 6" by 6" white daisy cardstock about a 1/4" from bottom and right hand sides. Stamp the Friendship word in Star Spangled Blue ink.

Using your ruler, measure 3 dots 1/4" apart on both the upper right hand and lower left side of your card. Punch them with a 1/16th inch hole punch.

Add matching brads. Attach whole card front to 12" by 6" white daisy cardstock folded in half. You can have it open at the bottom or to the right. Give it to a good friend!

For those of you who want in on the cardstock sale!

It is while supplies are left. I did just check and the Basic cardstock pack is 50% gone already and we're not even to the halfway point of February. Do not delay if you want to get it on this super deal! Where else can you get cardstock for 30 cents a sheet?

A few more cards

A week or so ago I showed you a simple card that I made with the Friendship's Flight stamp set. I am making this same card 100 times over because I'm going to be in a huge swap at our Close to my Heart convention this year and need lots of cards to trade. I thought I'd share a few of these with you so you can see how the card template works with any colors and papers you like!

Veranda and Caprice

Topstitch

Twitterpated

Twitterpated and Caprice

Here are the directions to make the original card.

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!!

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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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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.