New from Close To My Heart!

For those of you  who have ordered from me through my Close To My Heart website, it is no longer around. CTMH has provided us with a brand new website! It is easier to navigate and has a lot of new features. You will see my contact information including my blog and FB page (which I hope to open soon). I will now only have to load my classes, my creations and all other info on my blog instead of two or three places. You can see the Idea Book there and it is much more viewable. The first tab at the top is SHOP, click on that and there are lots of options, but I want to point out that the bottom selection is "While Supplies Last" you can get some super deals here. Another tab PROJECT INSPIRATION features CTMH TV which are short videos showing techniques, ideas and how to use our products. This also has the Workshop On The Go projects, the bonus projects and more. PROMOTIONS tab shows the currant promotions like Constant Campaigns and Stamp of the Month. Also, when you are on the home page, there is a moving marquee featuring the newest things that have been added such as videos and such.
Shipping is cheaper than it used to be. It is the same as when you place an order directly with me. When you order from the website the order will go directly to you.
Another new item, we've been provided with a monthly newsletter! Most of the content will be written by Close To My Heart, but we will have limited space to add our own news. All my contact info will be there and I will be directing you to my blog to get further information on classes and such.

Feminine card and new technique I tried

As I said before, I have a bunch of birthdays in March, so here is another card. This one for a friend of mine. I used Frosted Designs card sketch #14 for this card. And The Shabby Tea Room is celebrating its second birthday this week with lots of prizes and inspiration going on. Go on over there and check it all out. Their weekly challenge "Spring Is Near" has a photo for inspiration. We need to use three of the colors in the photo and dry embossing. We were to use our imaginations for the dry embossing and I remembered I'd just seen someone showing how to emboss using acrylic packaging. I'm sorry I don't recall where I saw it and so I can't give credit where its due. I used a piece of acrylic packaging and ran it through Sizzex Texture Boutique. Then I cut my flower shape using my Cricut and the Art Philosophy cartridge. Next I swiped Stazon Timber Brown ink over the flowers. I cut three sizes. 1 1/2", 1", and 3/4". Then I heated with craft heater to shape and dry the ink. You need to be very careful here. It doesn't take much heat to soften enough to bend the petals. To much heat melts the texture right out. I know! But, it was fun and easy to do and I really like how they look. Another great way to reuse and recycle!
I cut my circle card shape, the little flowers, and the sentiment label using the same Cricut cartridge. The seam binding I dyed to match the Sweet Leaf cardstock strip that I laced through a Color Ready Self Adhesive Border from CTMH. The paper is an old paper pack: Notebook. The card base is Desert Sand cardstock and I used D1477 Universal Backgrounds stamp set to get  the woodgrain texture. The ink is Desert Sand for a tone on tone look. Here is the sketch:

 

 And here is my creation-

 

An inside peek-

 

And a close-up of the acrylic flower-  

 

I will definitely be using this technique more. 

Have a blessed day.                               Polly

 

Lucky to have you in my life Challenge

Not sure what happened with my last post. I said I entered it into 2 challenges, one being the weekly Heart2Heart challenge, but on checking back later in the week, I discovered that I hadn't added it to either of the places that I should have. I thought I remembered doing that, but I guess not. Maybe being busy getting ready to go out of town and age have something to do with that! Haha. It's quite a process to do everything that needs done to get a post ready. Make the project, take pictures of the project, upload pictures to computer, take them into photo program and do whatever you gotta do to them (which I don't know a whole lot about), save them, then go create your post and get everything in it, then go link it to whatever your wanting to link it to. That leaves quite a lot of areas where you could leave something out, especially when your in a hurry. So I completed all the challenges at Heart 2 Heart in February, but you won't see that over there.
Heart 2 Heart's challenge this week is to make a card for someone you are lucky to have in your life and also to use the color green. March is a month full of birthdays of friends and family so I chose to make a card for one of them. Green is good for a masculine card, so that's what I chose to do. I am combining that with the Mojo Monday 232 card sketch challenge. Here is the sketch.

 

And here is my card. I used patterned paper from Close To My Heart's Stella and a small piece from an old paper pack called Rustic Trail. I used CTMH's ink colors: Bamboo, Desert Sand, Olive, and Stazon Black. I used a stipple brush for the background and used 3 of the ink colors mentioned. Most of the stamp sets were retired stamp sets. I used our twill for the ribbon.

 

And the inside:

 

Now off to create more birthday cards.

                                                                    Blessings,       Polly

 

H2H challenge and a birthday card

This coming week my baby boy will celebrate his 19th birthday. Where have all those days and years gone? It's amazing, I remember clearly thinking when I had him, what am I doing? How can I do this? He was number 4 and I had a 3yr. old, a 1 yr. old, and now a newborn. We were blessed to have the oldest a daughter who was 11, but I was quite overwhelmed at the time. But, I survived and it's flown by. Since then I've done several things that I didn't think I'd be able to do. I've homeschooled the last 3, something I didn't plan to do and didn't really have a desire to do until it came the right time to do that. And I've even survived 4 teenagers! They've really all been good teenagers and we have been blessed. That's not to say we haven't gone through some trying times and some embarrassing moments, but overall, I am thankful. I am proud of them and love them each one.
So this week for the H2H challenge we have a photo inspiration and it had the colors and elements for a perfect boy card! Here is the photo.

And then Mojo Monday's 230 sketch was a circle or square card. And here is the sketch for that.

And here is my creation from this inspiration.

I find that sometimes its harder to come up with a boy/man card, there's just not as many things that you can use for them. No frilly stuff, flowers and whatnot, but I am happy with what I figured out for this one.
So go on over to both of these sites and check out a lot of other creativityness.
Hope you enjoy.                                                       Blessings,    Polly