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!!!

  

Handmade Cards - Stampin Up

One evening this week I had the opportunity to go along to a card making evening with some friends and it was so good!  I know that for many of you, you most likely do things like this often, but I don't tend to get out much, especially evenings, to do things on my own without the kids, so I totally enjoyed it!!

The cards were all simple to make and done using stamping techniques.  They were all made using Stampin' Up stamps.  The lady hosting the evening wasn't a Consultant for Stampin Up, but she very obviously favoured their products and had an enormous supply of everything to choose from.  It was fun using a different variety of stamps and ink colours to what I have at home.

Christmas Reindeer

This Christmas card has an embossed background, which was done using a Sizzix Big Shot Machine.  The brown card was lightly sanded after it was embossed, which brings out a two tone background - rather nice!

Coffee & Friends Card

Although I prefer Tea to Coffee, I still really loved this card.  It could be used for anything.  It doesn't look very complicated, and it isn't, but there are 3 different shades of brown ink to do all the stamping which gives nice colour variation.  All the splatter across the bottom comes from 3 separate stamps.  The band around the coffee cup is raised up to give the card some dimension.  All up a fun card to make.

Hexagon Card

This card, believe it or not, was actually the most challenging.  I used a new tool which I had never seen before and what it did was allowed me to line up my stamps exactly where I wanted them to go.  I tried stamping the hexagons freehand, which is never usually a problem for me, but could not achieve this same perfect look.  So I gave the tool a try and this was the end result, perfectly spaced little hexagons.  Each individual hexagon has been separately stamped.  I loved the colour palette of the ink pads in this one.  It was a great card to make and I like coming away feeling I have learned a new skill.

40th Birthday Card

This last card was something I made by myself at home for a friend's 40th Birthday.  I made a large card, double the size of what I would usually do, so that a number of friends could all write in the same card. The idea for the card design came from adapting another card I had found on Pinterest.  The green paper flower I made using an online tutorial and once finished, stuck a button on the top.  I loved how the entire card turned out.

 

I find card making to be so relaxing and almost therapeutic, I really should do it more often!!

 

Samaritan's Purse - Operation Christmas Child 2013

Well I can't believe that 12 months has already rolled around again so quickly - where has the time gone?!!  We are at that time of the year when we start to prepare our Shoeboxes full of gifts for Operation Christmas Child.

This has become a yearly event our family is always involved in and we love putting together boxes full of gifts for children who live in places around the world where they don't have much at all.  For us it doesn't necessarily come easy financially to be involved in this venture, it is a sacrifice.  We have a large family and it is expensive just to provide for the needs of our own children, but we look beyond this to the opportunity this experience provides as a valuable teaching lesson to our children.  We need to be thankful for the things we have and reach out to help those around us.  It encourages the spirit of giving at Christmas, rather than having kids only focus on what they want to receive.  As many of you know, the gift of giving actually brings you a greater sense of joy within yourself - for me it has been such a blessing to see my own kids understand this.

 

Samaritan's Purse is a Christian relief and evangelism organization.  The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to demonstrate God's love in a tangible way to needy children around the world. 

 

To learn more about Operation Christmas Child you can visit their website here.

 

The concept is to share a gift with a child by filling a box with a variety of small gifts.  The box will then be collected and distributed to a needy child somewhere else in the world.

It has been fun throughout the last 12 months, shopping for this project.  We do watch the stores for sales and buy up a lot of the supplies for the boxes then - for example, back to school sales are a great opportunity to get lots of school supplies cheaply.  By stretching our dollar, while still providing quality items, we are able to actually put together a few extra boxes than we might have been able to do otherwise.  My kids are so in tune with the whole concept of Operation Christmas Child that when they see things on sale throughout the year that are on our lists for the boxes, they are very eager to buy them and put them away for when we are ready to pack the shoeboxes in August.

 

Last week we pulled out our containers of supplies.  I store everything we purchase throughout the year in large plastic containers to keep them all clean.  My younger girls sorted all the supplies into separate piles to make it easy to collect what we needed for each box and then we began the task of packing the individual boxes.  It was very exciting and lots of fun for the kids.  They get so much enjoyment out of putting together a box of supplies for a gift for another child somewhere in the world.  Last on the list of things to add to the boxes is a photo of the kids, to make the gift a bit more personal for the recipient, so they know somebody made this parcel for them and cares for them.

 

 

Our church family all get involved with Operation Christmas Child and the church is a local collection point for people to be able to drop their packed shoeboxes off to.  It is amazing each year to see a massive wall of boxes which are all donated by the generous people from both our church family and our local community.  The school where our children go is also involved in this project, so we have opportunities to be involved each year by donating items for the school students to pack boxes.  The school then sends a team of senior students overseas on a mission trip to help with the distribution of the boxes - truly a life changing experience!

 

If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend getting involved - contact Samaritan's Purse for more details of how to do this in your local area.

 

Playgroup Crafts

This year seems to be going so fast and I find myself constantly in planning mode for Playgroup, especially when it comes to the weekly crafts.  Our group is growing in size, which is wonderful, but it is also challenging me time-wise to prepare so many crafts each week - I usually work on preparing for 40-50 children. If I can find something in a kit form, it is a bonus, but those usually work out too expensive and so I revert back to something that is the most cost effective.

 

So where do lots of my ideas come from?  Well I gather them from all over the place.  Sometimes we work on a theme each term and other times crafts are a bit more random.  Pinterest is one of my favourite places to source ideas from, but I also borrow ideas from crafts my own children might make at school, especially during that first year at school. 

 

So for those of you who might have the need to come up with craft ideas for young children, be it for using at home or elsewhere, I thought I would share with you a few of our latest crafts.  None of them are difficult.  Most only require glue and decorating, so they are relatively easy.

 

A green frog - with lots of sparkling glitter!

Snake made from a paper plate

This looks good when pulled up from the head in the centre

Crown decorated with Dot Markers & gems

Birds in a Nest

We've been doing a bit of painting too.  Last week we did magic pictures where I had drawn pictures onto white paper using a white crayon and then gave the children a watered down paint wash to paint over the top and reveal the picture.

Another fun form of painting which all the children love to do is marble painting. 

We use a jumbo sized marble for this, almost a golf ball size, dip it in paint and place it in a shallow container with a piece of paper already placed in the bottom.  The children just need to roll the marble around inside and it creates a fun painting, especially when using multiple colours.

I don't always remember to take a photo of our crafts each week, but I am trying to be more diligent at doing that so that I can build up my own craft resources and then rotate them every few years as new groups of children come through.

If you have any great ideas for that 2-5 year old age group or know of some great websites with inexpensive but creative ideas, I would really value your feedback.  If we all help one another out, we will have enough ideas to share around for a very long time to come!

Variegated Crochet Ripple Blanket

I have been so excited about my current crochet project which I have been steadily working away on, so thought I would give you an update.

If you have visited my blog before you may remember me sharing about my latest purchase of some lovely soft yarns and my plan was to turn them into a new Ripple Blanket.

While our home has been undergoing major repairs and renovations and I've not been able to access my craft supplies, nor a flat space to work on, my crochet has been a wonderful creative alternative.  It would drive me absolutely crazy not to have something to be able to work on.

My ripple blanket is growing into a lovely lap sized rug

Working on a crochet blanket has been the perfect winter project and now that it is growing it has the added bonus of keeping me nice and cozy in the evenings as I continue working away on it.

Here is a close up of the pattern and colours

I've been so pleased with the combination of the pink with the variegated colours, they look so good together.  The variegated yarn is made up of pink, grey and a creamy white.

If you are in Australia and have a Lincraft store near you, they have their yarns on sale this week for 30% off.  I highly recommend this Veronica yarn I am using, while it may be thick, it is the softest and warmest yarn I've used in a long time - really nice to work with.  You can't go wrong with it!