Miss Ally Auction and New event blog

As some of you might be aware Nova Scotia is mourning the loss of 5 young fishermen.  There is currently an Auction running with various donations up for grabs.  100% of the proceeds will be divided between the 5 families.

I am donating a card or Cricut class for up to 5 people and Michelle Stewart is donating a registration to our Operation Autumn ReTreat for September, or $75 worth of CTMH product.  

Below are the links to our items up for bid as well as the link for the Auction itself.

Card or Cricut class

Registration for Operation ART

Miss Ally Auction

Michelle and I are going to offer more and more events together and needed a way to post info about these events as they get bigger and bigger soooooo we started an event blog "operation ART"We currently have 2 scheduled events..

March 23, 2013 Spring Fling Card Class   registration deadline: March 1, 2013 extended

• Make 12 assorted cards of various themes including Easter for adult, Easter for child, birthday for adult (1 masculine, 1 feminine), birthday for child (1 masculine, 1 feminine), sympathy, thank you, wedding, baby, thinking of you and an all occasion one for you to choose. Click on the title above for more info.

September 20,21,22 OPERATION Autumn ReTreat registration deadline: August 25, 2013

• Join us for an all weekend retreat with workshops included, fun, games, lots of prizes and much much more. This is an event you will not want to miss!!  Click on the title above for more info

For Always

Welcome to our February Art Philosophy/Artiste Blog Hop! As you know, these cartridges are available exclusively through a Close to My Heart consultant. If you don't already have a Consultant that you are currently working with, please contact one the Consultants in our hop with any questions you have!

Our theme this month features not only one of these amazing cartridges but also a brand NEW paper pack from Close to My Heart - "For Always". In this hop, you will see projects featuring one (or both!) of our versatile Cricut cartridges with this paper pack from many talented crafty ladies! Enjoy our blog hop!

If you have just hopped onto my blog, please start at the beginning at Lucy's blog – Love 2 Create. If you came from Lucy's blog – Love 2 Create then you are in the right place!

I just had to make one of the swing cards for this as I hadn't actually made one yet (GASP) and this paper just cried out to be used for this.

I have to say though that once I cut all the pieces I could not decide which side of the paper to use as both sides are gorgeous!

I also have to tell you that although lots of the swing cards have "prefect" matches in the Art Philosophy and Artiste cartridges to fit the cut out the hart is not one of them. I tried every heart on both cartridges and although they are VERY close none fit perfectly so I cut out the heart on page 51 of the Artiste cartidge (shift + accent 3) and then just trimmed it a bit with scissors.

The card base is cut at 5.5" from Gypsy cardstock and I did the same cut from the For Always paper and then used my paper trimmer to trim 1/8" off of each edge. The stamp is A1131 Seal - Love. 

I thought I would show you that you don't really need that extra layer anyways so here is a picture of it without that extra white heart. I stamped it this time directly on the Gypsy paper with White Daisy ink.

Here is a picture of the card open so you can see I used the heart I cut from the For Always layer and layered it behind with a layer of white (trimmed) to be able to write something in this card easily.

Your next stop on our "For Always" hop is Theodora over at Celebrate Crafts.

Here is the complete lineup in case you get lost along the way:

1. Lucy ~ Love 2 Create 
2. Darla ~ Caution: Stamping is Contagious
3. Theodora ~ Celebrate Crafts  
4. Michelle ~ My Creations With Michelle 
5. Priscilla ~ Priscilla's Paperie 
6. Wendy ~ My Scrapbooking Blog  
7. Stephanie ~ The Quilted Scrapper  
8. Michelle ~ My Flights of Fancy 
9. Ellen ~ CardMonkey's Paper Jungle 
10. Melissa Lind ~ MyWatermelonMoon
11. Jennifer ~ 4 Hearts Scrapbooking   
12. Traci ~ Paper Crafting 101  

Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you.

Wedding with that handmade touch

I am sharing a card for the Card a Day Blog today.

I made these for a friends wedding.

The focal image is a stamp that I hand made for the bride using a sketched image of a lily she liked. I transferred it onto an eraser and used a lino block carving tool to carve the stamp out of the eraser. This really makes her invites completely unique as she is guaranteed that no one will ever have the same thing unless she lends them the stamp that was made. 

The image was stamped onto a wood veneer business card which are available in packs of 200 of so from Lee Valley Tools for less than $5. Matted with chocolate brown paper and then onto some textured pink metallic paper (chocolate and pink were her wedding colours).We also used the same image in pale pink on white and had magnets made with the bride and grooms names in chocolate and their wedding date on them. We were fortunate enough that the brides sister works for a printing company so she got all the magnets printed in a coated glossy so we didn't actually have to hand stamp those or anything.. just laid it all out once and scanned it in for her to print. I love adding texture and other materials like wood and things to a card. I find it really gives them that extra little something and makes them look truly unique and handmade yet still looking professionally done at the same time. I'd love to hear what you have added onto your cards or other projects that were a bit outside the box!  Who knows... I just might need to try it out. ;)

Home Sweet Home

Welcome to our February Stamp of the Month Blog Hop! This month's stamp set from Close to My Heart is "Home Sweet Home" and is available exclusively through your Close to My Heart consultant from February 1 - 28, 2013. You can purchase this stamp set for only $5 with a qualifying purchase.

If you have just hopped onto my blog, please start at the beginning at Lucy's blog – Love 2 Create.
If you came from Lucy's blog – Love 2 Create then you are in the right place!


For my project today I decided I really wanted to make a housewarming gift for some wonderful friends of ours. I will most likely make a card and tag with some bottles of wine to go with this but didn't get that done in time to share with you today. :)

I chose to make a set of coasters for them. I really wanted to stamp the image and emboss it to use as a resist for some etching cream and etch around it (the embossing comes right off afterwards when you wash the cream off)... however when I went to get my etching cream it was almost empty and had gone hard. Not to worry though... I simply changed the plan.

Check it out:

I grabbed my white staz-on and stamped the image on. I used some flat back pearl for feet. I haven't decided yet how I want to seal this (really important since staz-on ink WILL come off with alcohol and since I plan to gift these coaster with a bottle of wine... well, I'm sure you get the picture).

There are 2 different options I'm torn between. The first is simply coating the top with sealer and the second option if to add another piece of glass on top of this one sandwiching the ink in between and then to really finish it off grab my silver tape from my stained glass stuff and go around the edges with a little solder. I sort of like the simple look of them with no edging so I may just stick with the sealer but I might just have to try oe out the other way before making a final decision to compare. :)

Your next stop on our "Home Sweet Home" hop is Amber ~ Scrapper's Therapy.


Here is the complete lineup in case you get lost along the way:
Lucy ~ Love 2 Create
Darla ~ Caution: Crafting is Contagious
Amber ~ Scrapper's Therapy
Jennifer ~ 4 Hearts Scrapbooking
Priscilla ~ Priscilla's Paperie
Theo ~ Celebrate Crafts
Traci ~ Paper Crafting 101
Ryan ~ Piece and Paper
Michelle ~ My Creations with Michelle
Donna ~ Diary of a Scrapbook Addict (link:
Stephanie ~ The Quilted Scrapper
Jane ~ Jane's Scrap Shack

Beach wedding invite

I have this beach themed wedding invites over on the Card a Day Blog today.

I did these invitations for a friend of mine She really wanted the aqua mulberry paper but of course couldn't find any that we could get here in time so I made my own version for her which she loved. We took tissue paper and crumpled it up a few times and then used a spray adhesive to stick 2 pieces together. I then painted lines of water where I wanted to tear it to make it easier to keep to the dimensions I needed and tore it apart. She had a picture of some shells and sea urchin in a similar colour palette that she wanted to use so I printed the picture off on some cardstock and then printed her text on some vellum to layer on top. Finished it off with some raffia and a sand dollar cuttlebug die cut.

The RSVP was done with the same tissue paper layer and then just printed the text on some nice paper. Added a couple more die cuts and voila!