It's Called Artbooking for a Reason

As many of you know, Close to My Heart has just released a brand, new Cricut cartridge: Artbooking!!! It's nothing short of fantastic!!! Oh the things you will be creating with this cartridge - we don't even know where to begin! So, we decided to show you some of the creations WE have made using this amazing, versatile cartridge It's not just for scrapbookers you know. There are 700 images with a ton of coordinating stamps.

If you don't already have a Consultant that you are currently working with, please contact one of the Consultants in our hop with any questions you have!

In this hop, you will see projects featuring this versatile cartridges 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!

Today I decided to show you that although Artbooking has wonderful scrapbooking layouts all pre-designed for you that you just pick your colours and start cutting or mix and match to make your own, mini-books and all things scrapbooking... it is still fabulous for cards!

I am loving the page laces for card backgrounds like I used in my Halloween card that I made HERE.

This time however, I wanted to show you that with just a few scrap pieces laying on my desk I was able to add a couple cuts from the cartridge and make a card that I am very happy with. 

I used the stamp set Country-Born D1543 stamped in cocoa on colonial white and matted it with a piece of Babycakes B&T paper. I coloured the image with alcohol markers as well as sponged a bit of new england ivy on the bottom and some cocoa and cashmere around the edges. Then I grabbed some scrap pieces of ruby and honey and distressed the edges with cocoa. 

I cut the border image from page 72 at 6" from New england ivy and the leaves from both autumn terracotta and honey. I crumpled and sanded the leaves and then inked directly with the pigment inks and smooshed it around with my fingers until I was happy with the end result (I used cocoa, goldrush, autumn terracotta, cashmere and new england ivy for this). The image panel is raised up on foam tape as well as the swirl is raised up in some parts and stuck flat in others to give it more dimension.

Oh and I should have taken a photo of the inside... but the sentiment inside says "I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck".

This will be going in my pile of cards to send to the Deployed Canadian Military for them to use to send home. I know I would love a card like this from my hubby while he is deployed, so I'm sure someone else will too. :) If you'd like more info on how to go about sending cards to our Deployed Canadian Military please check out the Facebook page I started HERE or contact me and I can send you the info.

Your next stop on our Artbooking blog hop is Jennifer of 4 Hearts Scrapbooking.

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

1. Lucy ~ Love 2 Create
2. Darla ~ Crafting is Contagious 
3. Jennifer~ 4 Hearts Scrapbooking
4. Wendy Kessler ~ My Scrapbooking Blog
5. Janna Gray ~ The Creative Princess

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

Wired - Sketch 18

Today's card uses my new absolute favourite paper pack ProPlayer along with the ProPlayer Stickease and some of the new stamps that are just absolutely perfect for those teenage boys cards we all have so much trouble with. Paired all of this with Sketch 18 from my sketch challenge blog Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge and voila!

I stamped the word "Wired" from the Tech Speak stamp set in White Daisy ink as well as the cool circuit like background across the middle from the School Years stamp set. I applied some liquid glass over the stickease pieces to make them look like better buttons as well as some liquid glass over the sentiment "Wired". The equalizer type strip is the zip strip from this paper as well and the whole card front is on a Pacifica card base with the bottom corners rounded off.

I hope you will take a few minutes to go over and check out the rest of the design teams creations today and maybe even feel inspired to enter this weeks challenge. :)

Products Used:

Sketch 17

Today's card is SUPER simple since I had a much more elaborate card made but in the process of plugging in the camera to charge so I could take the picture I knocked my water over onto my card. I did not have time to re do the elaborate version for you so I did up this quick little 3x3 note card using Sketch 17 from Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge.

This card uses cocoa ink on desert sand cardstock and this months Stamp Of The Month which is FREE with any purchase over $50 this month.

Please go check out all the other great creations by our design team using this weeks sketch HERE.

A Chocolate Affair

Welcome to our August Stamp of the Month Blog Hop!  This month's stamp from Close to My Heart is "A Chocolate Affair" and is available exclusively through your Close to My Heart consultant from August 1 - 31, 2013.  This month, you can receive this stamp set for FREE 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 today's card I used a tutorial from the Technique Junkie CD "Shape It" (well sort of... I couldn't find my cd right off so I just winged it... I think I did alright). :) I knew as soon as I saw this months Stamp Of The Month set I would be making this card with it for sure!

I really could have stamped any of the sentiments from this set on this card but I figured this one was probably the most versatile for just tossing into my collection of cards to have on hand. I really like how it turned out though so I may be making more of this one to add to my box of cards for the Canadian Troops.

I used chocolate cardstock for my card base and the squares of chocolate. Whisper and a piece from the Babycakes paper packet make up the wrapper with a piece of aluminum foil. So much fun!


Your next stop on our "Chocolate Affair" hop is Rebecca ~ Show Me Scrapping

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

1. Lucy ~ Love 2 Create 
2. Darla ~ Caution: Crafting is Contagious
3. Rebecca ~ Show Me Scrapping
4. Jennifer~ 4 Hearts Scrapbooking
5. Janna ~ The Creative Princess
6. Pam ~ Pam's Crafty Creations
7. Connie ~ Connie Creates 2 
8. Mary ~ Cr8ive M.E.

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

Happy Birthday - Sketch 16

I had to make a card for my little cousins 1st birthday... (Happy Birthday sweet girl!) on the weekend and as usual I fell back on the sketch for Atlantic Hearts as my starting off point. Of course after I finished the card I remembered I just got the cutest stamp set from the new idea book out of Jeanette's Archive so I pulled it out and made a second card with it.

Here's card #1

Here's card # 2

I honestly can't tell you which is my favourite as I keep going back and forth between them. They both use the new Babycakes paper with chocolate cardstock on colonial white card bases. They also both use the Babycakes Complements for the "ribbon". Oh and yes, they really are the same colour in real life but when I tried to correct the colour in the photo of the giraffe one it turned the grey background green when I adjusted the colour for the chocolate so I gave up and left the patterned paper as close as possible to the correct colour and I'll let you imagine the chocolate colour like you see on the teddy bear card on it instead of the darker almost cocoa colour that you see in the photo.

The giraffe card I simply stamped the sentiment from D1502 - Look Who's on the canvas Babycakes complements using the chocolate pigment ink from the basics assortment.

The teddy bear card everything is stamped with the pigment ink and then I used alcohol markers to colour in the bow, present and hat (by the way the present and hat are separate stamps in the set so your bear doesn't have to be birthday he can just be a bear with a bow on him). I used a blender pen with the chocolate ink to colour in the bear nice and light.

Now head on over to the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge blog to see the all the awesome creations by our wonderful Design Team and to see who got Top 3 from last weeks sketch HERE.

Once you've been inspired I'd love to see you get brave and link up your own take on this weeks sketch HERE.

Products Used Today:

Beware Sketch 15

Make sure you check out the  rest of the Design Teams creations and Tops 3 from last weeks sketch (after you read my post of course or at least check out the card I made) so you don't miss out on some truly awesome creations! I am so very proud of our design team, they make my heart happy.

I always try to make cards for my sons preschool class and friends and family from both my kids (my youngest isn't in preschool or anything yet) for all the holidays.

This year I need to make sure I start them just a little bit earlier than usual to ensure they get made on time for each holiday.

That said when I was looking through my new Close To My Heart Artbooking cricut cartridge I saw a few images and had this weeks sketch in the back of my mind for this years Halloween cards. Now I know you're probably not ready to start your Halloween cards just yet but I bet over the next month you're going to start trying to (or after the fact will wish you started to so you didn't end up doing them last minute like I usually do) figure out what you're going to make so you can get all the supplies you'll need.

Check out what I came up with!

The card base is 6" square of cranberry cardstock and then the black is a 5.5" square. I used the Artbooking cartridge to cut the spider web overlay at 5.5" from whisper cardstock which I then sanded a bit and added some glitz gel randomly on it (not sure if you can pick out the glitter in the photo or not but trust me.. in real life the web has a definite sparkle). The spider was cut with the dial size set at 11.5" (this cartridge is set up so that the pieces will cut to make the layout pictured in the handbook by setting the dial size once and cutting all of your pieces hence the large dial size for this spider... I also could have used real dial size and cut it somewhere around 3" since that's how big he ended up). I cut the "Beware" at 1" with real dial size on (I think it would have cut this size had I just left my dial size on 5.5" and not used Real Dial Size as well).

I covered my spider with bonding memories glue using the jumbo glue stick and poured some black flocking on him. I love that this card has the fuzzy spider and the shimmery web. The spider is then positioned with the "Beware" first and then the word and spider are popped up together with foam tape.


Please head over and check out what the rest of the design team made with this weeks sketch as well as the Top 3 from Sketch 14 HERE

Products Used: