More paper flowers and a color challenge

This card sketch comes from Mojo Monday #256 and a color challenge from Heart 2 Heart challenges that I admit I had some trouble with. Just wasn't sure how to use Pear and Lagoon together. I used two of the wonderful papers from the Dotty For You paper pack and then the Lagoon flower is from the Stella paper pack. The sunset flowers are cut from the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge white cardstock and my waterbrush. The Lagoon flower was cut from the newest Close To My Heart Artiste Cricut cartridge. I used the flower on pg 54 using Accent 3 and shift key. I cut several at different sizes and then added the stamens. The green chevron banner is stamped using our National Stamping Month special stamp set. "It's Your Day" This is a double stamp set and a super deal. Order $35 in product and get this set for $5 more!

 If you would like to take advantage of this awesome deal just hit the "shop with me" button on the right. You won't be sorry!
Our color-ready seam binding that I spritzed with water and scrunched up and let dry like that and a stick pin from our Bling Assortment completed the flower cluster.
So here is my card

and a close up of the flowers

and I even decorated the  inside

This card was made for a special friend who has a birthday tomorrow!
Blessings,    Polly

Doggie card and Dakota paper

August brings the "dog days of summer" and so H2H's challenge was to make a card with a dog on it.The dog stamp is an older retired stamp and it reminded me of a little boy baby card, could be for a baby shower or a first birthday or some occasion like that. The new Dakota paper pack has some super papers for boys. And the new stamp set B1405 Rugged Dude has this cute little pocket stamp. I didn't have small gold brads for the pocket studs so I created my own by embossing some using gold embossing powder. I have been itching to use our new burlap ribbon and it goes perfectly with this card. I added some tiny black beads to his eyes to make them stand out a little and a small circle from a circle punch made his tag.

Blessings,   Polly

Sympathy card using Avonlea paper and other new product

I love the colors in this paper pack, they are my comfort colors. I like that some of the papers look like they are textured.
Close To My Heart is always striving to stay on trend and they have added a feature in this new Idea Book that they haven't done before. They are offering some trendy colors to certain paper packs. The paper packs that offer these trendy colors are:
Avonlea with Avonlea Off-White, Avonlea Teal, and Avonlea Green
La Belle Vie with: La Belle Vie Mauve, and La Belle Vie Pink
Flirty with: Fliry Raspberry, and Flirty Yellow
  Now what exactly does that mean? It means in each of the above paper packs there is cardstock included with those particular colors and you can only get those colors when you order one of those paper packs. The cardstock or inks won't be available any other way.
  Why? That allows them to change some colors in each catalog to stay a little more trendy and yet, we won't have to be buying more cardstock and inks every little bit.
  How's that going to work? These paper packs have enough of our regular colors that there will still be plenty of cardstock and ink choices in the color palette to choose from and then we will have some extra color choices in cardstock in the paper pack to play with. And if your not quite as versed in the color wheel and pulling in colors that could be added, Tresa Black has done that fabulously for us. Go here to see the PDF's that shes created to share. Thank you Tresa, your fabulous! This is exactly what I needed. I plan to do the Avonlea card kit as a class in September and some of the ladies expressed a concern about the cards not being very colorful. Now I have this reference sht to pull in some color. I love it. We will probably do at least one card of each of the three designs and then we'll probably do some of our own designing from there. Or they will expect me to do that :)
This card was designed for a friend who recently lost an Aunt, but it also goes with the H2H challenge Sympathy card for Aug, the first wk.
Besides the Avonlea paper pack here are the other new products I used:
the fancy swirly frame- cut from the Artiste Cricut cartridge!  it's a must have and I will certainly be using and showing many more designs from this awesome cartridge.

Silver Shimmer Trim-its self adhesive!

Black and Grey Sparkles

 This flower isn't Close To My Heart and it wasn't created from one of the flowers on the Cricut cartridge. It was a preformed purchased one, but I colored it with my water brush and Juniper ink and then added some Glitz Glitter Gel in Stardust.

A simple card, but very elegant and appropriate for a sympathy card.
                                      Blessings,      Polly

Double stamp set for Aug/Sept Constant Campaign

September is National Stamping month and Close To My Heart wants to get the party started early! So as of Aug. 15, yesterday through September 30 you can order a double stamp set called, "It's Your Day". This is a retail value of $35.90, but you can have this stamp set by purchasing $35 in product from CTMH and then for $5 more get this double stamp set. This baby is loaded with so many stamps that are trendy now and could be used for so many projects. Mini albums such as, All About You or Family, scrapbook pages of all kinds, and even cards. I will be showing some artwork in future posts.
Here is what you get.

Don't miss out on this special deal.
Blessings,  Polly

Dress card

For this month's card group I switched things up a bit. Normally I decide on a card and I prepare all the kits and then they put them together like my sample- with some variations. I have been wanting to make a card using this dress template found here. So I thought it would be fun to put out several paper packs and let the ladies decide on which they wanted to use and create their own look. I encouraged them to use my scraps if possible. I made 3 samples to get their creative juices flowing. It was very interesting, a huge success, and I had a large mess to clean up afterward, what with all the paper packs, embellishments, stamp sets, etc! My only regret- that I didn't take pictures of each one.
Here is my favorite for more than one reason. I love this new paper pack-La Belle Vie, and I just love how this all came together, very vintagey ( if that's a word.) I used the weekly sketch challenge over on the Paper Craft Planet.

 

And a look on the inside

This one I used some of the yummy Dotty For You paper

and then an older paper pack, but I love how it turned out

these are so fun and I can think of more that I'd like to try. Hope this stirs up your creative juices to go "create"!
If your wondering where to find some of this wonderful paper which is heavy cardstock and double sided. Look to the right for a Shop With Me button and check out what we have. All new paper packs just came out this month!
                                              Blessings,  Polly

The Little Princesses are 1!!!

It's so hard to believe that one year ago today we were anxiously waiting to hear from our son and his wife what our two latest grandchildren were. They were expecting twins and hadn't found out before whether we had boys, girls, or one of each. Most thought that since we had so many boys in the family we'd probably have at least one boy. Most of us were hoping to be blessed with one boy and one girl. Though we were mostly just anxious to meet them and wanted them to be happy and healthy.
What a surprise when we heard that we were blessed with two healthy girls!!
They have been such good, happy, healthy little girls. We are sad that we don't get to see them more often, but modern technology sure helps to make distance seem not quite so far. Kate, (their mother) is so good about sending pictures frequently on my phone, we've been up there 3 times since they were born, and now that my husband has an iPhone I hope to do Facetime. Maybe we can "kinda" be there at their party. So here they are

And here is the cards I made for them. Cards will have to do for now and the gifts will come later.

I hope we don't have to wait to long to see them again. They grow and change so fast at this age.
Thanks for stopping by,     Polly

Birthday card

The end of July and throughout August brings a lot of birthdays in our family. And as usual I am running behind in getting them made and sent out. My family knows me and I don't think they're surprised. We were in IN in June and I got the grandsons done and given out then, we kinda had a big birthday party for all then.
 This card is for our daughter. She's a very special person in my life and I miss her so. I wish I could help her more and just spend more time together shopping, crafting, and whatever else we find to do together.
 So I used the Roxie paper pack (no longer available) and some new products from our latest catalog.
I love the vintage/French flair of  these new stamp sets: Bonjour B1414 and Jardin D1528.
I stamped using our new Slate ink the script/flower stamp on the canvas looking paper from Roxie and then overstamped the Bonjour in Smoothie. This is the background of the inside of the frame. I stamped the frame on Colonial White cardstock in black and then painted on a gold shimmer over it. I wanted an old looking gold/black frame. I fussy cut the frame inside and out and then popped it up.
The peachy looking flowers were cut using the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge and then rolled. The pink flower was created with the same cartridge, but it was cut  separately in layers. I waterbrushed on the pink and then stamped over that with the script part of the stamp mentioned above in Slate ink. I misted the petals with water and using a stylus I crumpled and added texture to each layer. After they were dry, I then glued each layer, staggering the petals and added a grey pearl in the center. I then painted some gold shimmer over it all. The leaves were cut from Juniper cardstock and  the same Cricut cartridge and I added some texture using the stylus and then ink distressed using Chocolate ink. The grey satin polka dot is another new product.
I really like how this turned out.

 

Here are a couple of close ups

The last photo you can see the gold shimmer I painted on. I like this subtle shimmer so much. And a photo doesn't do it justice.

Have a blessed day,      Polly