Handmade Cards - Close To My Heart CTMH

Last night I hosted my first home gathering and enjoyed an evening of card making with a great group of ladies.  It was so much fun!

 

I am loving the opportunity to create projects from all these wonderful new products.  Here are the cards we made last night.

Both this card and the next one were made using the Chantilly Paper Pack.  The colours and designs in the pack are just gorgeous with so many creative possibilities.

The stamp sets used here are Beautiful Friendship - this was used for the wording in both cards as well as the pale yellow stamped background on the second card, which is a little hard to see in the picture.  The other set used for the flowers was my favourite Hooray Bouquet.  The flowers were cut out and mounting tape has been used to add dimension to the card.

 

The ladies really enjoyed making both cards and loved the designs and the new products they were able to try out.

Today I have made up one more quick card and I'm pleased with how it turned out!

This card would be great for a beginner.  The main stamped part of the card was made using the Honeycomb stamp set. The inks are bright, sunny colours - they make you feel happy!

 

I hope you are having a great day!!

 

Birthdays, Kids Crafts and Cards!

Do you ever have weeks where you feel like you have just lived a month within the space of one week?  Well we have just had one of those.

The week always starts with Playgroup preparations - here are our latest Playgroup crafts for those of you who like craft ideas for little people.

I found tubs of cute stickers which we used to make these.  Foam sticker tubs are great value.  I made up 50 separate crafts and used just over one tub, so I have plenty of leftovers to put away for another year. 

We had had a birthday  and a birthday cake!  Very simply decorated with marshmallow flowers dipped in pink sugar.  The inside of the cake was a little impressive though, chocolate cake filled with coloured cake balls - it gave a nice rainbow effect.  Of course, silly me, I forgot to take a photo of the cake once it was cut.

 

We usually do home birthday parties, but this year the Birthday Girl wanted to go bowling with some of her little friends.  They had such a fun time and I discovered that we have one very serious little bowler in the family!

 

And the special occasion included the Birthday Girl getting her ears pierced!

It has been exam week at school, getting end of term assignments finished and handed in and just lots of extra running around in general.  But amidst all the craziness that has been our week, one of my girls and I have had a chance to have some fun together and try out some of our new Close To My Heart stamps and make some cards. 

These stars are fantastic!  I still need to work on my techniques for applying the Liquid Glass to give a glossy, 3D effect.  I've used it on other cards with no problems, but this time I applied it right after inking - so I have learned that you need to let the ink dry first so that it doesn't bleed.  I am loving the colours in this card though!!!

This card was made by one of my younger girls.  She did a great job!  It was done using the stamps from a set called Hooray Bouquet.  This has been one of my favourite stamp sets so far and I have used it myself for so many card projects.

This one is made from a set of stamps called Beautiful Friendship.  My daughter has done it in her favourite colour.  Her stamping techniques are getting better the more she does.

I have a few more cards I am working on at the moment, but will wait and share those with you another time. 

Hope your week is a productive one with a little crafting included somewhere!

Close To My Heart - Shop Online in Australia Now

I am super excited about the very recent launch of Close To My Heart in Australia.  Following the company's earlier introduction to the Australian market last year and the very positive response that received, CTMH has now officially launched their company in both Australia and New Zealand.  The great news for all of us is that it now means everyone has the opportunity to purchase and use the wonderful CTMH products!!

If you have never had the opportunity to take a look at any CTMH products, I invite you to click on the link here.  You then need to click on Products and from there choose the 2013 Products Launch Guide.  Then sit back and enjoy browsing!

CTMH provides quality products for all of my stamping and scrapbooking needs - both hobbies which I personally enjoy.  One thing I really appreciate about CTMH is it's affordability.  This is something which particularly matters when you have a large family.  I love to be able to enjoy my crafts but need to work within a specific budget to justify (mostly to myself) the expense.  It has been great to see how quickly my stamps and ink supplies have grown through CTMH products, simply because of affordability . . . not to mention the fact that I love the designs and colour palette.

My first introduction to CTMH was back in the late 1990's and they were one of the first companies which had co-ordinating papers, cardstock and ink pads.  I still have some of my original inks and they are still working fine.  They also had one of the most amazing collections of stamps available.  So you can see, my enthusiasm for CTMH coming to Australia is definitely well founded.

Here is an example of a scrapbook page and a few other crafty ideas made using the great pinwheels stamps which are available in the exclusive Stamp of the Month set for September.  This one is definitely joining my collection, look at the variety of sizes which you can place together to form a dimensional pinwheel.   I love the pinwheels and can think of so many possibilities for using them!!

 

Stamp of the month sets are only available for purchase for one calendar month and then they are no longer available after that. If you like this one, be sure you don't miss out.

 

I know that there are lots more products available to those of you who live in the USA and I am looking forward to the product catalogue expanding for Australia next year.  In the meantime, if you wish to shop online yourself, you can do this from here.  There are fantastic benefits if you are a serious scrapper or card maker, you may wish to look into becoming a CTMH consultant yourself.  Especially in the early stages of this being new to Australia, a great time to join.  Just ask me how!!

I'm off to play with some new stamps and create a few new card designs too ~ fun, fun, fun!!!