Holidays from the Heart HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

TODAY is a SPECIAL DAY!

The beginning of the Holidays from the Heart Gift Guide campaign!  

View the Holiday Gift Guide

Choose a FREE holiday product with your qualifying order...

From now until December 31st, when you place an order of $100 or more in retail-priced products, you qualify for one free "star" item from the Holidays from the Heart Gift Guide.  

You'll love the sparkle, and the savings!

Place your order online from my website and have it shipped directly to your door, 

(JOIN the Holiday Gift Guide open party and have a chance to win FREE product) 

or contact me and I'm happy to place your order for you!

Love the artwork? 

The online recipes show what products were used to create all the fabulous artwork inside!

View the RECIPES to the Holiday Gift Guide

Artbooking Made Easy - Halloween Mini Albums

Close To My Heart will bring your projects back to life with the Cricut® Artbooking cartridge. Watch this video to learn how to use it while making your own fun Halloween mini albums.

I haven't personally made this one yet...but it's oh, so cute! 

I love the smaller interactive page within the first mini-album.

By now, you know how amazing the Artbooking Cricut cartridge is.

Enjoy!

Please feel free to leave a comment...

Autumn Pumpkin Paper Crafting

The weather outside has been cooler the last few days, and I'm enjoying my favorite time of year...AUTUMN!  In Colorado, the autumn season doesn't last long enough...I love crisp mornings with afternoon highs in the 60's.  Life is good!

My friend Shari shared this idea with me, and I just had to make one for myself.  

 I've seen something similar posted on Pinterest, in addition to pumpkins, I can see these made with red color cardstock to resemble an apple and give as a small teachers gift too.  

Here's how you make them:

take a 5"x6" piece of cardstock and cut into (8) 3/4" x 5" strips.  If you want to add the tone on tone stamping, do this before assembling your pumpkin.  In this case, I used the flower from the Happy Autumn stamp set, and randomly stamped the 5x6 piece of cardstock before cutting into strips.  

Stack the strips together and pierce a hole in the top and bottom of each piece.  

Add a brad to the top and the bottom of your strips.  

Carefully, flare the pieces out to make a pumpkin shape (this takes some manipulation).  

I cut out images from the Cricut cartridges as follows:

Leaf & Vine - Artiste, pg78, 3D Object, shift <GiveThnk>, cut at 3-3/4"

Black Cat - Artbooking, pg70. Icon, shift <C>, cut at 2-1/4" with Real Dial Size ON

Sentiment Bracket - Artiste, pg33, Accent3, <3>, cut at 1-1/4" in Colonial White, then again at 1-1/2" in Black cardstock.  Stamp set = Holiday Tags.

 I tied the sentiment onto the leaf & vine using Bakers Twine, and added some tan bitty sparkles to the cats eyes.

Artbooking Made Easy: A+ School Layouts

With school in full swing now, hopefully you have time to preserve some of those precious memories.

Close To My Heart's new Cricut® Artbooking collection will give you what you need to score an A+ on back-to-school projects! See how to make your own in this video.

Enjoy!

Saturday YouTube: Mixed Papers

If you're like me, after you have created your layouts from the WOTG kits, you still have a few scraps left over. 

I am always challenging myself to "finish off" a paper pack, so I try to create as much artwork as possible to use it up.  Do you ever consider mixing and matching papers from different kits to 
create artwork with a new look?  It's time to think outside the box.  

In this video, Tiffany shares with us how you can coordinate mixed papers from different paper packs.

Have a great weekend!  Enjoy!

Trick or Treat with Artbooking

MY CONFESSION: 

When my upline, Michelle Snyder, shared her Halloween layouts...I knew I had to scrap-lift her amazing artwork!

Thanks, Michelle!  

Isn't this layout stinkin' cute?  

For the layout, I used the 1/2 overlay (corner spiderweb) cut from the Silver Glitter Paper.  The spider web overlay can be found on page 70 in the Artbooking booklet, you guessed it, the size dial is set at 11" for the spider web.  The title "Trick or Treat" is from page 55 in Artbooking, and this one was set at 6" since this key is designed for a 6" Halloween themed mini album...I might just need to make that too!  I added the zip strips from Laughing Lola papers, and matted my photo spaces with Laughing Lola papers too.  My base pages are Lagoon, with a piece of 11x11-1/2" Black cardstock on each, leaving a 1/2" border around 3 sides and coming together in the center.  Each Sunset square measures 2-1/4".  The photo mat on the left page measures 5-3/4"x7-3/4", and the Lagoon cardstock measures 5-1/4"x7-1/4" for a 5x7 photo.  The larger of the two photo mats on the right page measures 5-3/4"x5-3/4" and the Lagoon cardstock measures 5-1/4"x5-1/4" for a 5x5 photo.  The smaller photo mat measures 4-1/4"x3" with the Lagoon cardstock measuring 3-3/4"x2-1/2" for a wallet size photo.

Growing up, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays...I always enjoyed dressing up in costume and going door to door trick or treating.  I have lots of happy memories of Halloween's past.  Since moving to the country 16 years ago, and living in Colorado's high country...Halloween is usually our first cold spell of the season.  

So...now that you have seen how you can coordinate papers to work for Halloween, I hope you create some special moments this Halloween, and preserve your memories in scrapbooks!  

Spooky Halloween - Artbooking Made Easy!

It's easy to add some creative spook to your projects with the Cricut® Artbooking collection from Close To My Heart. View a few creepy creations and learn how to make your own in this video.

This video inspired me to make my own Halloween layout.  So many of you mentioned the lack of Halloween papers in this new Autumn/Winter 2013 Idea Book.  Well...let me prove you wrong!  Although, honestly, I didn't think about it either...but I've seen so many great layouts using Laughing Lola papers with the addition of a few coordinating colors, Sunset, Lagoon, Slate & Whisper.

 Have I mentioned how much I LOVE the new Artbooking cartridge!  This layout took me no time at all to create!    All the images can be found on page 71 of the Artbooking booklet, with the size dial set at 11".  All the images are linked to automatically re-size themselves for perfect sizing of photo mats, titles and accent pieces.  I did use the Black Glitter Paper for the haunted mansion, and a few of the bats too...this idea was inspired by my upline, Michelle Snyder...her artwork is amazing!

I can't wait to add pictures to this layout!  What are your plans for Halloween?  

Why not create a layout or two and preserve your holiday memories!

Come back tomorrow...I have another glittery Halloween layout to share!

October Stamp of the Month: Scandinavian Wishes

Each month you can purchase a new D-size stamp set, available for one month only, for just $5 — that’s over 70% off retail! When you place an order of $50 or more in Close To My Heart products, you qualify for this special Stamp of the Month pricing.

View the October Stamp of the Month 

I took a different spin on my card using the Scandinavian Wishes stamp set.  

I was assigned to use the October SOM set with the Sarita papers.    

My card is 4-1/4"x5-1/2" and my inspiration came from the Make It From Your Heart, Volume 2 card design #22.  I used several embellishments that coordinate with the Sarita papers...the Sarita Textiles, Aqua Dots, Base & Bling Teal Jewels, and the hemp bakers twine from the Wooden Mini-Medleys.  

Creating coordinating artwork is so easy to do with the fabulous CTMH product line!